OLD  FRONT  LINE 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 


THE  OLD  FRONT  LINE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

HKW  YORK  •    BOSTON  •   CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE 
OLD  FRONT  LINE 


4- 


% 


BY 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 

Author  of  "Gallipoli,"  etc. 


N«ii  fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1918 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1917 
By  JOHN  MASEFIELD 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,   December,  1917. 
Reprinted  January,  1918. 


TO 
NEVILLE  LYTTON 


376175 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACINQ 
PAGB 

The  Road  up  the  Ancre  Valley i6 

Artillery  Transport  in  Bapaume  Road     ...  28 

Troops  Moving  to  the  Front 38 

An  Artillery  Team 40 

View  in  Hamel ,      .      .  42 

The  Ancre  River 44 

The  Ancre  Opposite  Hamel 48 

The  Leipzig  Salient     .      . 58 

Dugouts  in  La  Boisselle 66 

La  Boisselle 70 

Fricourt 74 

Fricourt 76 

Sandbags  at  Fricourt 78 

Mametz 82 

Sleighs  for  the  Wounded 88 

The  Attack  on  La  Boisselle 94 


THE  OLD  FRONT  LINE 

This  description  of  the  old  front  line,  as  it  was 
when  the  Battle  of  the  Somme  began,  may  some 
day  be  of  use.  All  wars  end ;  even  this  war  will 
some  day  end,  and  the  ruins  will  be  rebuilt  and 
the  field  full  of  death  will  grow  food,  and  all 
this  frontier  of  trouble  will  be  forgotten. 
When  the  trenches  are  filled  in,  and  the  plough 
has  gone  over  them,  the  ground  will  not  long 
keep  the  look  of  war.  One  summer  with  its 
flowers  will  cover  most  of  the  ruin  that  man  can 
make,  and  then  these  places,  from  which  the 
driving  back  of  the  enemy  began,  will  be  hard 
indeed  to  trace,  even  with  maps.  It  is  said  that 
even  now  in  some  places  the  wire  has  been  re- 
moved, the  explosive  salved,  the  trenches  filled, 
and  the  ground  ploughed  with  tractors.  In  a 
few  years'  time,  when  this  war  is  a  romance  in 
memory,  the  soldier  looking  for  his  battlefield 
will  find  his  marks  gone.  Centre  Way,  Peel 
Trench,  Munster  Alley,  and  these  other  paths 
to  glory  will  be  deep  under  the  corn,  and  glean- 
ers will  sing  at  Dead  Mule  Corner. 

9 


/ 


ic>  7'ht  Old  Front  Line 

It  Is  hoped  that  this  description  of  the  line 
will  be  followed  by  an  account  of  our  people's 
share  In  the  battle.  The  old  front  line  was  the 
base  from  which  the  battle  proceeded.  It  was 
the  starting-place.  The  thing  began  there.  It 
was  the  biggest  battle  In  which  our  people  were 
ever  engaged,  and  so  far  It  has  led  to  bigger 
results  than  any  battle  of  this  war  since  the  Bat- 
tle of  the  Marne.  It  caused  a  great  falling 
back  of  the  enemy  armies.  It  freed  a  great 
tract  of  France,  seventy  miles  long,  by  from  ten 
to  twenty-five  miles  broad.  It  first  gave  the 
enemy  the  knowledge  that  he  was  beaten. 

Very  many  of  our  people  never  lived  to  know 
the  result  of  even  the  first  day's  fighting.  For 
then  the  old  front  line  was  the  battlefield,  and 
the  No  Man's  Land  the  prize  of  the  battle. 
They  never  heard  the  cheer  of  victory  nor 
looked  Into  an  enemy  trench.  Some  among 
them  never  even  saw  the  No  Man's  Land,  but 
died  In  the  summer  morning  from  some  shell  In 
the  trench  In  the  old  front  line  here  described. 

It  IS  a  difficult  thing  to  describe  without 
monotony,  for  it  varies  so  little.  It  Is  like  de- 
scribing the  course  of  the  Thames  from  Oxford 
to  Reading,  or  of  the  Severn  from  Deerhurst 
to  Lydney,  or  of  the  Hudson  from  New  York 


The  Old  Front  Line  ii 

to  Tarrytown.  Whatever  country  the  rivers 
pass  they  remain  water,  bordered  by  shore.  So 
our  front-line  trenches,  wherever  they  He,  are 
only  gashes  in  the  earth,  fenced  by  wire,  beside 
a  greenish  strip  of  ground,  pitted  with  shell- 
holes,  which  is  fenced  with  thicker,  blacker,  but 
more  tumbled  wire  on  the  other  side.  Behind 
this  further  wire  is  the  parapet  of  the  enemy 
front-line  trench,  which  swerves  to  take  in  a 
hillock  or  to  flank  a  dip,  or  to  crown  a  slope, 
but  remains  roughly  parallel  with  ours,  from 
seventy  to  five  hundred  yards  from  it,  for  miles 
and  miles,  up  hill  and  down  dale.  All  the  ad- 
vantages of  position  and  observation  were  In 
the  enemy's  hands,  not  In  ours.  They  took  up 
their  lines  when  they  were  strong  and  our  side 
weak,  and  In  no  place  In  all  the  old  Somme  posi- 
tion Is  our  line  better  sited  than  theirs,  though 
in* one  or  two  places  the  sites  are  nearly  equal. 
Almost  in  every  part  of  this  old  front  our  men 
had  to  go  up  hill  to  attack. 

If  the  description  of  this  old  line  be  dull  to 
read,  it  should  be  remembered  that  It  was  dull 
to  hold.  The  enemy  had  the  lookout  posts, 
with  the  fine  views  over  France,  and  the  sense 
of  domination.  Our  men  were  down  below 
with  no  view  of  anything  but  of  stronghold  after 
stronghold,  just  up  above,  being  made  stronger 


12  The  Old  Front  Line 

daily.  And  If  the  enemy  had  strength  of  posi- 
tion he  had  also  strength  of  equipment,  of  men, 
of  guns,  and  explosives  of  all  kinds.  He  had 
all  the  advantages  for  nearly  two  years  of  war, 
and  in  all  that  time  our  old  front  line,  whether 
held  by  the  French  or  by  ourselves,  was  nothing 
but  a  post  to  be  endured,  day  in  day  out,  in  all 
weathers  and  under  all  fires,  in  doubt,  difficulty, 
and  danger,  with  bluff  and  makeshift  and  im- 
provisation, till  the  tide  could  be  turned.  If  it 
be  dull  to  read  about  and  to  see,  it  was,  at  least, 
the  old  line  which  kept  back  the  tide  and  stood 
the  siege.  It  was  the  line  from  which,  after  all 
those  months  of  war,  the  tide  turned  and  the  be- 
sieged became  the  attackers. 

To  most  of  the  British  soldiers  who  took  part 
in  the  Battle  of  the  Somme,  the  town  of  Albert 
must  be  a  central  point  in  a  reckoning  of  dfet- 
ances.  It  lies,  roughly  speaking,  behind  the 
middle  of  the  line  of  that  battle.  It  is  a  knot  of 
roads,  so  that  supports  and  supplies  could  and 
did  move  from  it  to  all  parts  of  the  line  during 
the  battle.  It  is  on  the  main  road,  and  on  the 
direct  railway  line  from  Amiens.  It  is  by  much 
the  most  important  town  within  an  easy  march 
of  the  battlefield.  It  will  be,  quite  certainly,  the 
centre  from  which.  In  time  to  come,  travellers 


The  Old  Front  Line  13 

will  start  to  see  the  battlefield  where  such  deeds 
were  done  by  men  of  our  race. 

It  is  not  now  (after  three  years  of  war  and 
many  bombardments)  an  attractive  town;  prob- 
ably it  never  was.  It  is  a  small  straggling  town 
built  of  red  brick  along  a  knot  of  cross-roads  at 
a  point  where  the  swift  chalk-river  Ancre, 
hardly  more  than  a  brook,  is  bridged  and  so 
channeled  that  it  can  be  used  for  power.  Be- 
fore the  war  it  contained  a  few  small  factories, 
including  one  for  the  making  of  sewing-ma- 
chines. Its  most  important  building  was  a  big 
church  built  a  few  years  ago,  through  the  energy 
of  a  priest,  as  a  shrine  for  the  Virgin  of  Albert, 
a  small,  probably  not  very  old  image,  about 
which  strange  stories  are  told.  Before  the  war 
it  was  thought  that  this  church  would  become  a 
northern  rival  to  Lourdes  for  the  working  of 
miraculous  cures  during  the  September  pilgrim- 
age. A  gilded  statue  of  the  Virgin  and  Child 
stood  on  an  iron  stalk  on  the  summit  of  the 
church  tower.  During  a  bombardment  of  the 
town  at  a  little  after  three  o'clock  in  the  after^ 
noon  of  Friday,  January  15,  19 15,  a  shell  so 
bent  the  stalk  that  the  statue  bent  down  over 
the  Place  as  though  diving.  Perhaps  few  of 
our  soldiers  will  remember  Albert  for  anything 
except  this  diving  Virgin.     Perhaps  half  of  the 


14  The  Old  Front  Line 

men  engaged  in  the  Battle  of  the  Somme  passed 
underneath  her  as  they  marched  up  to  the  line, 
and,  glancing  up,  hoped  that  she  might  not  come 
down  till  they  were  past.  From  some  one, 
French  or  English,  a  word  has  gone  about  that 
when  she  does  fall  the  war  will  end.  Others 
have  said  that  French  engineers  have  so  fixed 
her  with  wire  ropes  that  she  cannot  fall. 

From  Albert  four  roads  lead  to  the  battlefield 
of  the  Somme : 

1.  In  a  north-westerly  direction  to  Auchon- 
villers  and  Hebuterne. 

2.  In  a  northerly  direction  to  Authuille  and 
Hamel. 

3.  In  a  north-easterly  direction  to  Pozieres. 

4.  In  an  easterly  direction  to  Fricourt  and 
Maricourt. 

Between  the  second  and  the  third  of  these  the 
little  river  Ancre  runs  down  its  broad,  flat,  well- 
wooded  valley,  much  of  which  is  a  marsh 
through  which  the  river  (and  man)  have  forced 
more  than  one  channel.  This  river,  which  is  a 
swift,  clear,  chalk  stream,  sometimes  too  deep 
and  swift  to  ford,  cuts  the  English  sector  of  the 
battlefield  into  two  nearly  equal  portions. 

Following  the  first  of  the  four  roads,  one 
passes  the  wooded  village  of  Martinsart,  to  the 


The  Old  Front  Line 


15 


village  of  Auchonvlllers,  which  lies  among  a 
clump  of  trees  upon  a  ridge  or  plateau  top. 
The  road  dips  here,  but  soon  rises  again,  and 
so,  by  a  flat  tableland,  to  the  large  village  of 
Hebuterne.  Most  of  this  road,  with  the  ex* 
ception  of  one  little  stretch  near  Auchonvillers, 
is  hidden  by  high  ground  from  every  part  of  the 
battlefield.  Men  moving  upon  it  cannot  see  the 
field. 

Hebuterne,  although  close  to  the  line  and 
shelled  daily  and  nightly  for  more  than  two 
years,  was  never  the  object  of  an  attack  in  force, 
so  that  much  of  it  remains.  Many  of  its  walls 
and  parts  of  some  of  its  roofs  still  stand,  the 
church  tower  is  in  fair  order,  and  no  one  walk- 
ing in  the  streets  can  doubt  that  he  is  in  a  village. 
Before  the  war  it  was  a  prosperous  village ;  then, 
for  more  than  two  years,  it  rang  with  the  roar 
of  battle  and  with  the  business  of  an  army. 
Presently  the  tide  of  the  war  ebbed  away  from 
it  and  left  it  deserted,  so  that  one  may  walk  in 
it  now,  from  end  to  end,  without  seeing  a  human 
being.  It  is  as  though  the  place  had  been  smit- 
ten by  the  plague.  Villages  during  the  Black 
Death  must  have  looked  thus.  One  walks  in 
the  village  expecting  at  every  turn  to  meet  a 
survivor,  but  there  is  none;  the  village  is  dead; 
the  grass  is  growing  in  the  street;  the  bells  are 


1 6  The  Old  Front  Line 

silent;  the  beasts  are  gone  from  the  byre  and  the 
ghosts  from  the  church.  Stealing  about  among 
the  ruins  and  the  gardens  are  the  cats  of  the 
village,  who  have  eaten  too  much  man  to  fear 
him,  but  are  now  too  wild  to  come  to  him. 
They  creep  about  and  eye  him  from  cover  and 
look  like  evil  spirits. 

The  second  of  the  four  roads  passes  out  of 
Albert,  crosses  the  railway  at  a  sharp  turn,  over 
a  bridge  called  Marmont  Bridge,  and  runs 
northward  along  the  valley  of  the  Ancre  within 
sight  of  the  railway.  Just  beyond  the  Mar- 
mont Bridge  there  is  a  sort  of  lake  or  reservoir 
or  catchment  of  the  Ancre  overflows,  a  little  to 
the  right  of  the  road.  By  looking  across  this 
lake  as  he  walks  northward,  the  traveller  can 
see  some  rolls  of  gentle  chalk  hill,  just  beyond 
which  the  English  front  line  ran  at  the  beginning 
of  the  battle. 

A  little  further  on,  at  the  top  of  a  rise,  the 
road  passes  the  village  of  Aveluy,  where  there 
is  a  bridge  or  causeway  over  the  Ancre  valley. 
Aveluy  itself,  being  within  a  mile  and  a  half 
of  enemy  gun  positions  for  nearly  two  years 
of  war,  is  knocked  about,  and  rather  roofless 
and  windowless.  A  cross-road  leading  to  the 
causeway  across  the  valley  once  gave  the  place 
some  little  importance. 


The  Old  Front  Line  17 

Not  far  to  the  north  of  Aveluy,  the  road  runs 
for  more  than  a  mile  through  the  Wood  of 
Aveluy,  which  is  a  well-grown  plantation  of 
trees  and  shrubs.  This  wood  hides  the  marsh 
of  the  river  from  the  traveller.  Tracks  from 
the  road  lead  down  to  the  marsh  and  across  it 
by  military  causeways. 

On  emerging  from  the  wood,  the  road  runs 
within  hail  of  the  railway,  under  a  steep  and 
high  chalk  bank  partly  copsed  with  scrub. 
Three-quarters  of  a  mile  from  the  wood  it 
passes  through  the  skeleton  of  the  village  of 
Hamel,  which  is  now  a  few  ruined  walls  of  brick 
standing  in  orchards  on  a  hillside.  Just  north 
of  this  village,  crossing  the  road,  the  railway, 
and  the  river-valley,  is  the  old  English  front 
line. 

The  third  of  the  four  roads  is  one  of  the  main 
roads  of  France.  It  is  the  state  highway,  laid 
on  the  line  of  a  Roman  road,  from  Albert  to 
Bapaume.  It  is  by  far  the  most  used  and  the 
most  important  of  the  roads  crossing  the  battle- 
field. As  it  leads  directly  to  Bapaume,  which 
was  one  of  the  prizes  of  the  victory,  and  points 
like  a  sword  through  the  heart  of  the  enemy 
positions  it  will  stay  in  the  memories  of  our 
soldiers  as  the  main  avenue  of  the  battle. 

The  road  leaves  Albert  in  a  street  of  dingy 


1 8  The  Old  Front  Line 

and  rather  broken  red-brick  houses.  After 
passing  a  corner  crucifix  it  shakes  itself  free  of 
the  houses  and  rises  slowly  up  a  ridge  of  chalk 
hill  about  three  hundred  feet  high.  On  the  left 
of  the  road,  this  ridge,  which  is  much  withered 
and  trodden  by  troops  and  horses,  is  called  Usna 
Hill.  On  the  right,  where  the  grass  is  green 
and  the  chalk  of  the  old  communication  trenches 
still  white  and  clean,  it  is  called  Tara  Hill. 
Far  away  on  the  left,  along  the  line  of  the  Usna 
Hill,  one  can  see  the  Aveluy  Wood. 

Looking  northward  from  the  top  of  the 
Usna-Tara  Hill  to  the  dip  below  it  and  along 
the  road  for  a  few  yards  up  the  opposite  slope, 
one  sees  where  the  old  English  front  line  crossed 
the  road  at  right  angles.  The  enemy  front  line 
faced  it  at  a  few  yards'  distance,  just  about  two 
miles  from  Albert  town. 

The  fourth  of  the  four  roads  runs  for  about  a 
mile  eastwards  from  Albert,  and  then  slopes 
down  into  a  kind  of  gully  or  shallow  valley, 
through  which  a  brook  once  ran  and  now  drib- 
bles. The  road  crosses  the  brook-course,  and 
runs  parallel  with  it  for  a  little  while  to  a  place 
where  the  ground  on  the  left  comes  down  in  a 
slanting  tongue  and  on  the  right  rises  steeply 
into  a  big  hill.  The  ground  of  the  tongue  bears 
traces   of   human   habitation   on   it,    all   much 


The  Old  Front  Line  19 

smashed  and  discoloured.  This  is  the  once 
pretty  village  of  Fricourt.  The  hill  on  the 
right  front  at  this  point  is  the  Fricourt  Salient. 
The  lines  run  round  the  salient  and  the  road 
cuts  across  them. 

Beyond  Fricourt,  the  road  leaves  another 
slanting  tongue  at  some  distance  to  its  left.  On 
this  second  tongue  the  village  of  Mametz  once 
stood.  Near  here  the  road,  having  now  cut 
across  the  salient,  again  crosses  both  sets  of 
lines,  and  begins  a  long,  slow  ascent  to  a  ridge 
or  crest.  From  this  point,  for  a  couple  of  miles, 
the  road  is  planted  on  each  side  with  well-grown 
plane-trees,  in  some  of  which  magpies  have  built 
their  nests  ever  since  the  war  began.  At  the 
top  of  the  rise  the  road  runs  along  the  plateau 
top  (under  trees  which  show  more  and  more 
plainly  the  marks  of  war)  to  a  village  so  planted 
that  it  seems  to  stand  in  a  wood.  The  village 
is  built  of  red  brick,  and  is  rather  badly  broken 
by  enemy  shell  fire,  though  some  of  the  houses  in 
it  are  still  habitable.  This  is  the  village  of 
Maricourt.  Three  or  four  hundred  yards  be- 
yond Maricourt  the  road  reaches  the  old  Eng- 
lish front  line,  at  the  eastern  extremity  of  the 
English  sector,  as  it  was  at  the  beginning  of  the 
battle. 


20  The  Old  Front  Line 

These  four  roads  which  lead  to  the  centre  and 
the  wings  of  the  battlefield  were  all,  throughout 
the  battle  and  for  the  months  of  war  which  pre- 
ceded it,  dangerous  by  daylight.  All  could  be 
shelled  by  the  map,  and  all,  even  the  first,  which 
was  by  much  the  best  hidden  of  the  four,  could 
be  seen,  in  places,  from  the  enemy  position. 
On  some  of  the  trees  or  tree  stumps  by  the  sides 
of  the  roads  one  may  still  see  the  "  camouflage  " 
by  which  these  exposed  places  were  screened 
from  the  enemy  observers.  The  four  roads 
were  not  greatly  used  in  the  months  of  war 
which  preceded  the  battle.  In  those  months, 
the  front  was  too  near  to  them,  and  other  lines 
of  supply  and  approach  were  more  direct  and 
safer.  But  there  was  always  some  trafiic  upon 
them  of  men  going  into  the  line  or  coming  out, 
of  ration  parties,  munition  and  water  carriers, 
and  ambulances.  On  all  four  roads  many  men 
of  our  race  were  killed.  All,  at  some  time,  or 
many  times,  rang  and  flashed  with  explosions. 
Danger,  death,  shocking  escape  and  firm  re- 
solve, went  up  and  down  those  roads  daily  and 
nightly.  Our  men  slept  and  ate  and  sweated 
and  dug  and  died  along  them  after  all  hardships 
and  in  all  weathers.  On  parts  of  them,  no  traf- 
fic moved,  even  at  night,  so  that  the  grass  grew 
high  upon  them.     Presently,  they  will  be  quiet 


The  Old  Front  Line  21 

country  roads  again,  and  tourists  will  walk  at 
ease,  where  brave  men  once  ran  and  dodged 
and  cursed  their  luck,  when  the  Battle  of  the 
Somme  was  raging. 

Then,  Indeed,  those  roads  were  used.  Then 
the  grass  that  had  grown  on  some  of  them  was 
trodden  and  crushed  under.  The  trees  and 
banks  by  the  waysides  were  used  to  hide  batter- 
ies, which  roared  all  day  and  all  night.  At  all 
hours  and  In  all  weathers  the  convoys  of  horses 
slipped  and  stamped  along  those  roads  with 
more  shells  for  the  ever-greedy  cannon.  At 
night,  from  every  part  of  those  roads,  one  saw  a 
twilight  of  summer  lightning  winking  over  the 
high  ground  from  the  never-ceasing  flashes  of 
guns  and  shells.  Then  there  was  no  quiet,  but 
a  roaring,  a  crashing,  and  a  screaming  from 
guns,  from  shells  bursting  and  from  shells  pass- 
ing in  the  air.  Then,  too,  on  the  two  roads  to 
the  east  of  the  Ancre  River,  the  troops  for  the 
battle  moved  up  to  the  line.  The  battalions 
were  played  by  their  bands  through  Albert,  and 
up  the  slope  of  Usna  Hill  to  Pozleres  and  be- 
yond, or  past  Fricourt  and  the  wreck  of  Mametz 
to  Montauban  and  the  bloody  woodland  near  It. 
Those  roads  then  were  Indeed  paths  of  glory 
leading  to  the  grave. 


22  The  Old  Front  Line 

During  the  months  which  preceded  the  Battle 
of  the  Somme,  other  roads  behind  our  front 
lines  were  more  used  than  these.  Little  vil- 
lages, out  of  shell  fire,  some  miles  from  the  lines, 
were  then  of  more  use  to  us  than  Albert.  Long 
after  we  are  gone,  perhaps,  stray  English  tour- 
ists, wandering  in  Picardy,  will  see  names 
scratched  in  a  barn,  some  mark  or  notice  on  a 
door,  some  sign-post,  some  little  line  of  graves, 
or  hear,  on  the  lips  of  a  native,  some  slang 
phrase  of  English,  learned  long  before  in  the 
wartime,  in  childhood,  when  the  English  were 
there.  All  the  villages  behind  our  front  were 
thronged  with  our  people.  There  they  rested 
after  being  in  the  line  and  there  they  established 
their  hospitals  and  magazines.  It  may  be  said, 
that  men  of  our  race  died  in  our  cause  in  every 
village  within  five  miles  of  the  front.  Wher- 
ever the  traveller  comes  upon  a  little  company 
of  our  graves,  he  will  know  that  he  is  near  the 
site  of  some  old  hospital  or  clearing  station, 
where  our  men  were  brought  in  from  the  line. 

So  much  for  the  roads  by  which  our  men 
marched  to  this  battlefield.  Near  the  lines  they 
had  to  leave  the  roads  for  the  shelter  of  some 
communication  trench  or  deep  cut  in  the  mud, 
revetted  at  the  sides  with  wire  to  hinder  it  from 


The  Old  Front  Line  23 

collapsing  inwards.  By  these  deep  narrow 
roads,  only  broad  enough  for  marching  in  single 
file,  our  men  passed  to  *'  the  front,"  to  the  line 
itself.  Here  and  there,  in  recesses  in  the 
trench,  under  roofs  of  corrugated  iron  covered 
with  sandbags,  they  passed  the  offices  and  the 
stores  of  war,  telephonists,  battalion  headquar- 
ters, dumps  of  bombs,  barbed  wire,  rockets, 
lights,  machine-gun  ammunition,  tins,  jars,  and 
cases.  Many  men,  passing  these  things  as  they 
went  "  in  "  for  the  first  time,  felt  with  a  sinking 
of  the  heart,  that  they  were  leaving  all  ordered 
and  arranged  things,  perhaps  forever,  and  that 
the  men  in  charge  of  these  stores  enjoyed,  by 
comparison,  a  life  like  a  life  at  home. 

Much  of  the  relief  and  munitioning  of  the 
fighting  lines  was  done  at  night.  Men  going 
into  the  lines  saw  little  of  where  they  were  go- 
ing. They  entered  the  gash  of  the  communica- 
tion trench,  following  the  load  on  the  back  of 
the  man  in  front,  but  seeing  perhaps  nothing 
but  the  shape  in  front,  the  black  walls  of  the 
trench,  and  now  and  then  some  gleam  of  a  star 
in  the  water  under  foot.  Sometimes  as  they 
marched  they  would  see  the  starshells,  going  up 
and  bursting  like  rockets,  and  coming  down 
with  a  wavering  slow  settling  motion,  as  white 
and  bright  as  burning  magnesium  wire,  shedding 


24  The  Old  Front  Line 

a  kind  of  dust  of  light  upon  the  trench  and  mak- 
ing the  blackness  intense  when  they  went  out. 
These  lights,  the  glimmer  in  the  sky  from  the 
enemy's  guns,  and  now  and  then  the  flash  of  a 
shell,  were  the  things  seen  by  most  of  our  men 
on  their  first  going  in. 

In  the  fire  trench  they  saw  little  more  than  the 
parapet.  If  work  were  being  done  in  the  No 
Man's  Land,  they  still  saw  little  save  by  these 
lights  that  floated  and  fell  from  the  enemy  and 
from  ourselves.  They  could  see  only  an  array 
of  stakes  tangled  with  wire,  and  something  dis- 
tant and  dark  which  might  be  similar  stakes,  or 
bushes,  or  men.  In  front  of  what  could  only  be 
the  enemy  line.  When  the  night  passed,  and 
those  working  outside  the  trench  had  to  take 
shelter,  they  could  see  nothing,  even  at  a  loop- 
hole or  periscope,  but  the  greenish  strip  of 
ground,  pitted  with  shell-holes  and  fenced  with 
wire,  running  up  to  the  enemy  line.  There  was 
little  else  for  them  to  see,  looking  to  the  front, 
for  miles  and  miles,  up  hill  and  down  dale. 

The  soldiers  who  held  this  old  front  line  of 
ours  saw  this  grass  and  wire  day  after  day,  per- 
haps, for  many  months.  It  was  the  limit  of 
their  world,  the  horizon  of  their  landscape,  the 
boundary.  What  interest  there  was  In  their 
life  was  the  speculation,  what  lay  beyond  that 


The  Old  Front  Line  25 

wire,  and  what  the  enemy  was  doing  there. 
They  seldom  saw  an  enemy.  They  heard-  his 
songs  and  they  were  stricken  by  his  missiles,  but 
seldom  saw  more  than,  perhaps,  a  swiftly  mov- 
ing cap  at  a  gap  In  the  broken  parapet,  or  a  grey 
figure  flitting  from  the  light  of  a  starshell. 
Aeroplanes  brought  back  photographs  of  those 
unseen  lines.  Sometimes,  In  raids  in  the  night, 
our  men  visited  them  and  brought  back  prison- 
ers; but  they  remained  mysteries  and  unknown. 
In  the  early  morning  of  the  i  st  of  July,  1 9 1 6, 
our  men  looked  at  them  as  they  showed  among 
the  bursts  of  our  shells.  Those  familiar  heaps, 
the  lines,  were  then  in  a  smoke  of  dust  full  of 
flying  clods  and  shards  and  gleams  of  fire.  Our 
men  felt  that  now,  In  a  few  minutes,  they  would 
see  the  enemy  and  know  what  lay  beyond  those 
parapets  and  probe  the  heart  of  that  mystery. 
So,  for  the  last  half-hour,  they  watched  and 
held  themselves  ready,  while  the  screaming  of 
the  shells  grew  wilder  and  the  roar  of  the  bursts 
quickened  Into  a  drumming.  Then  as  the  time 
drew  near,  they  looked  a  last  look  at  that  un- 
known country,  now  almost  blotted  In  the  fog  of 
war,  and  saw  the  flash  of  our  shells,  breaking  a 
little  further  off  as  the  gunners  ''  lifted,"  and 
knew  that  the  moment  had  come.  Then  for 
one  wild  confused  moment  they  knew  that  they 


26  The  Old  Front  Line 

were  running  towards  that  unknown  land,  which 
they  could  still  see  in  the  dust  ahead.  For  a 
moment,  they  saw  the  parapet  with  the  wire  in 
front  of  it,  and  began,  as  they  ran,  to  pick  out 
in  their  minds  a  path  through  that  wire.  Then, 
too  often,  to  many  of  them,  the  grass  that  they 
were  crossing  flew  up  in  shards  and  sods  and 
gleams  of  fire  from  the  enemy  shells,  and  those 
runners  never  reached  the  wire,  but  saw,  per- 
haps, a  flash,  and  the  earth  rushing  nearer,  and 
grasses  against  the  sky,  and  then  saw  nothing 
more  at  all,  for  ever  and  for  ever  and  for  ever. 

It  may  be  some  years  before  those  whose 
fathers,  husbands  and  brothers  were  killed  in 
this  great  battle,  may  be  able  to  visit  the  battle- 
field where  their  dead  are  buried.  Perhaps 
many  of  them,  from  brooding  on  the  map,  and 
from  dreams  and  visions  in  the  night,  have  in 
their  minds  an  image  or  picture  of  that  place. 
The  following  pages  may  help  some  few  others, 
who  have  not  already  formed  that  image,  to  see 
the  scene  as  it  appears  to-day.  What  it  was  like 
on  the  day  of  battle  cannot  be  imagined  by  those 
who  were  not  there. 

It  was  a  day  of  an  intense  blue  summer 
beauty,  full  of  roaring,  violence,  and  confusion 
of  death,  agony,  and  triumph,  from  dawn  till 


The  Old  Front  Line  27 

dark.  All  through  that  day,  little  rushes  of  the 
men  of  our  race  went  towards  that  No  Man's 
Land  from  the  bloody  shelter  of  our  trenches. 
Some  hardly  left  our  trenches,  many  never 
crossed  the  green  space,  many  died  in  the  enemy 
wire,  many  had  to  fall  back.  Others  won 
across  and  went  further,  and  drove  the  enemy 
from  his  fort,  and  then  back  from  line  to  line 
and  from  one  hasty  trenching  to  another,  till 
the  Battle  of  the  Somme  ended  In  the  falling 
back  of  the  enemy  army. 

Those  of  our  men  who  were  in  the  line  at 
Hebuterne,  at  the  extreme  northern  end  of  the 
battlefield  of  the  Somme,  were  opposite  the 
enemy  salient  of  Gommecourt.  This  was  one 
of  those  projecting  fortresses  or  flankers,  like 
the  Leipzig,  Ovillers,  and  Fricourt,  with  which 
the  enemy  studded  and  strengthened  his  front 
line.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  point  in  the  line  in 
France  was  stronger  than  this  point  of  Gomme- 
court. Those  who  visit  it  in  future  times  may 
be  surprised  that  such  a  place  was  so  strong. 

All  the  country  there  is  gentler  and  less  de- 
cided than  in  the  southern  parts  of  the  battle- 
field. Hebuterne  stands  on  a  plateau-top;  to 
the  east  of  it  there  is  a  gentle  dip  down  to  a  shal- 
low hollow  or  valley;  to  the  east  of  this  again 


28  The  Old  Front  Line 

there  Is  a  gentle  rise  to  higher  ground,  on  which 
the  village  of  Gommecourt  stood.  The  church 
of  Gommecourt  is  almost  exactly  one  mile 
northeast  and  by  north  from  the  church  at 
Hebuterne;  both  churches  being  at  the  hearts  of 
their  villages. 

Seen  from  our  front  line  at  Hebuterne,  Gom- 
mecourt is  little  more  than  a  few  red-brick  build- 
ings, standing  In  woodland  on  a  rise  of  ground. 
Wood  hides  the  village  to  the  north,  the  west, 
and  the  southwest.  A  big  spur  of  woodland, 
known  as  Gommecourt  Park,  thrusts  out  boldly 
from  the  village  towards  the  plateau  on  which 
the  English  lines  stood.  This  spur,  strongly 
fortified  by  the  enemy,  made  the  greater  part  of 
the  salient  In  the  enemy  line.  The  landscape 
away  from  the  wood  Is  not  in  any  way  remark- 
able, except  that  it  Is  open,  and  gentle,  and  on  a 
generous  scale.  Looking  north  from  our  posi- 
tion at  Hebuterne  there  Is  the  snout  of  the  wood- 
land salient;  looking  south  there  Is  the  green 
shallow  shelving  hollow  or  valley  which  made 
the  No  Man^s  Land  for  rather  more  than  a 
mile.  It  Is  just  such  a  gentle  waterless  hollow, 
like  a  dried-up  river-bed,  as  one  may  see  in  sev- 
eral places  in  chalk  country  In  England,  but  it 
is  unenclosed  land,  and  therefore  more  open  and 
seemingly  on  a  bigger  scale  than  such  a  land- 


T3 
O 


m 


o 


The  Old  Front  Line  29 

scape  would  be  in  England,  where  most  fields 
are  small  and  fenced.  Our  old  front  line  runs 
where  the  ground  shelves  or  glides  down  into 
the  valley;  the  enemy  front  line  runs  along  the 
gentle  rise  up  from  the  valley.  The  lines  face 
each  other  across  the  slopes.  To  the  south,  the 
slope  on  which  the  enemy  line  stands  is  very 
slight. 

The  impression  given  by  this  tract  of  land 
once  held  by  the  enemy  is  one  of  graceful  gen- 
tleness. The  wood  on  the  little  spur,  even  now, 
has  something  green  about  it.  The  village, 
once  almost  within  the  wood,  wrecked  to  shat- 
ters as  it  is,  has  still  a  charm  of  situation.  In 
the  distance  behind  Gommecourt  there  is  some 
ill-defined  rising  ground  forming  gullies  and 
ravines.  On  these  rises  are  some  dark  clumps 
of  woodland,  one  of  them  called  after  the  night- 
ingales, which  perhaps  sing  there  this  year,  in 
what  is  left  of  their  home.  There  is  nothing 
now  to  show  that  this  quiet  landscape  was  one 
of  the  tragical  places  of  this  war. 

The  whole  field  of  the  Somme  is  chalk  hill  and 
downland,  like  similar  formations  in  England. 
It  has  about  it,  in  every  part  of  it,  certain  fea- 
tures well  known  to  every  one  who  has  ever 
travelled  in  a  chalk  country.  These  features  oc- 
cur even  in  the  gentle,  rolling,  and  not  strongly 


30  The  Old  Front  Line 

marked  sector  near  Hebuterne.  Two  are  very 
noticeable,  the  formation  almost  everywhere  of 
those  steep,  regular  banks  or  terraces,  which 
the  French  call  remblais  and  our  own  farmers 
lynchets,  and  the  presence.  In  nearly  all  parts  of 
the  field,  of  roads  sunken  between  two  such 
banks  Into  a  kind  of  narrow  gully  or  ravine.  It 
is  said,  that  these  remblais  or  lynchets,  which 
may  be  seen  in  English  chalk  countries,  as  in  the 
Dunstable  Downs,  in  the  Chlltern  Hills,  and  in 
many  parts  of  Berkshire  and  Wiltshire,  are 
made  in  each  instance,  in  a  short  time,  by  the 
ploughing  away  from  the  top  and  bottom  of  any 
difficult  slope.  Where  two  slopes  adjoin,  such 
ploughing  steepens  the  valley  between  them  into 
a  gully,  which,  being  always  unsown,  makes  a 
track  through  the  crops  when  they  are  up. 
Sometimes,  though  less  frequently,  the  farmer 
ploughs  away  from  a  used  track  on  quite  flat 
land,  and  by  doing  this  on  both  sides  of  the 
track,  he  makes  the  track  a  causeway  or  ridge- 
way,  slightly  raised  above  the  adjoining  fields. 
This  type  of  raised  road  or  track  can  be  seen  in 
one  or  two  parts  of  the  battlefield  (just  above 
Hamel  and  near  Pozieres  for  Instance) ,  but  the 
hollow  or  sunken  road  and  the  steep  remblai  or 
lynchet  are  everywhere.  One  may  say  that  no 
quarter  of  a  mile  of  the  whole  field  Is  without 


The  Old  Front  Line  31 

one  or  other  of  them.  The  sunken  roads  are 
sometimes  very  deep.  Many  of  our  soldiers, 
on  seeing  them,  have  thought  that  they  were 
cuttings  made,  with  great  labour,  through  the 
chalk,  and  that  the  remblais  or  lynchets  were 
piled  up  and  smoothed  for  some  unknown  pur- 
pose by  primitive  man.  Probably  it  will  be 
found,  that  in  every  case  they  are  natural  slopes 
made  sharper  by  cultivation.  Two  or  three  of 
these  lynchets  and  sunken  roads  cross  the  shal- 
low valley  of  the  No  Man's  Land  near  Hebu- 
terne.  By  the  side  of  one  of  them,  a  line  of 
Sixteen  Poplars,  now  ruined,  made  a  landmark 
between  the  lines. 

The  line  continues  (with  some  slight  east- 
ward trendings,  but  without  a  change  in  its  gen- 
tle quiet)  southwards  from  this  point  for  about 
a  mile  to  a  slight  jut,  or  salient  in  the  enemy  line. 
This  jut  was  known  by  our  men  as  the  Point, 
and  a  very  spiky  point  it  was  to  handle.  From 
near  the  Point  on  our  side  of  No  Man's  Land,  a 
bank  or  lynchet,  topped  along  its  edge  with 
trees,  runs  southwards  for  about  a  mile.  In 
four  places,  the  trees  about  this  lynchet  grow  in 
clumps  or  copses,  which  our  men  called  after  the 
four  Evangelists,  John,  Luke,  Mark,  and  Mat- 
thew. This  bank  marks  the  old  English  front 
line  between  the  Point  and  the  Serre  Road  a 


32  The  Old  Front  Line 

mile  to  the  south  of  it.  Behind  this  English 
line  are  several  small  copses,  on  ground  which 
very  gently  rises  towards  the  crest  of  the  plateau 
a  mile  to  the  west.  In  front  of  most  of  this 
part  of  our  line,  the  ground  rises  towards  the 
enemy  trenches,  so  that  one  can  see  little  to  the 
front,  but  the  slope  up.  The  No  Man's  Land 
here  is  not  green,  but  as  full  of  shell-holes  and 
the  ruin  of  battle  as  any  piece  of  the  field. 
Directly  between  Serre  and  the  Matthew  Copse, 
where  the  lines  cross  a  rough  lump  of  ground, 
the  enemy  parapet  is  whitish  from  the  chalk. 
The  whitish  parapet  makes  the  skyline  to  ob- 
servers in  the  English  line.  Over  that  parapet, 
some  English  battalions  made  one  of  the  most 
splendid  charges  of  the  battle,  in  the  heroic  at- 
tack on  Serre  four  hundred  yards  beyond. 

To  the  right  of  our  front  at  Matthew  Copse 
the  ground  slopes  southward  a  little,  past  what 
may  once  have  been  a  pond  or  quarry,  but  is  now 
a  pit  in  the  mud,  to  the  Serre  road.  Here  one 
can  look  up  the  muddy  road  to  the  hamlet  of 
Serre,  where  the  wrecks  of  some  brick  buildings 
stand  in  a  clump  of  tree  stumps,  or  half-right 
down  a  God-forgotten  kind  of  glen,  blasted  by 
fire  to  the  look  of  a  moor  in  hell.  A  few  ram- 
pikes  of  trees  standing  on  one  side  of  this  glen 
give  the  place  its  name  of  Ten  Tree  Alley.     Im- 


The  Old  Front  Line  33 

mediately  to  the  south  of  the  Serre  road,  the 
ground  rises  into  one  of  the  many  big  chalk 
spurs,  which  thrust  from  the  main  Hebuterne 
plateau  towards  the  Ancre  Valley.  The  spur 
at  this  point  runs  east  and  west,  and  the  lines 
cross  it  from  north  and  south.  They  go  up  it 
side  by  side,  a  hundred  and  fifty  yards  apart, 
with  a  greenish  No  Man's  Land  between  them. 
The  No  Man's  Land,  as  usual,  Is  the  only  part 
of  all  this  chalk  spur  that  is  not  burnt,  gouged, 
pocked,  and  pitted  with  shell  fire.  It  is,  how- 
ever, enough  marked  by  the  war  to  be  bad  going. 
When  they  are  well  up  the  spur,  the  lines  draw 
nearer,  and  at  the  highest  point  of  the  spur  they 
converge  in  one  of  the  terrible  places  of  the  bat- 
tlefield. 

For  months  before  the  battle  began,  it  was  a 
question  here,  which  side  should  hold  the  high- 
est point  of  the  spur.  Right  at  the  top  of  the 
spur  there  is  one  patch  of  ground,  measuring. 
It  may  be,  two  hundred  yards  each  way,  from 
which  one  can  see  a  long  way  in  every  direction. 
From  this  patch,  the  ground  droops  a  little  to- 
wards the  English  side  and  stretches  away  fairly 
flat  towards  the  enemy  side,  but  one  can  see  far 
either  way,  and  to  have  this  power  of  seeing, 
both  sides  fought  desperately. 

Until  the  beginning  of  the  war,  this  spur  of 


34  The  Old  Front  Line 

ground  was  corn-land,  like  most  of  the  battle- 
field. Unfenced  country  roads  crossed  it.  It 
was  a  quiet,  lonely,  prosperous  ploughland, 
stretching  for  miles,  up  and  down,  in  great 
sweeping  rolls  and  folds,  like  our  own  chalk 
downlands.  It  had  one  feature  common  to  all 
chalk  countries;  it  was  a  land  of  smooth  ex- 
panses. Before  the  war,  all  this  spur  was  a 
smooth  expanse,  which  passed  in  a  sweep  from 
the  slope  to  the  plateau,  over  this  crown  of 
summit. 

To-day,  the  whole  of  the  summit  (which  is 

called  the  Redan  Ridge) ,  for  all  its  two  hundred 

yards,  is  blown  into  pits  and  craters  from  twenty 

to  fifty  feet  deep,  and  sometimes  fifty  yards  long. 

These  pits  and  ponds  in  rainy  weather  fill  up 

with  water,  which  pours  from  one  pond  into 

another,  so  that  the  hill-top  is  loud  with  the 

noise   of   the   brooks.     For  many  weeks,   the 

armies  fought  for  this  patch  of  hill.     It  was  all 

mined,  counter-mined,  and  re-mined,  and  at  each 

explosion  the  crater  was  fought  for  and  lost  and 

won.     It  cannot  be  said  that  either  side  won 

that  summit  till  the  enemy  was  finally  beaten 

from  all  that  field,  for  both  sides  conquered 

enough  to  see  from.     On  the  enemy  side,  a 

fortification  of  heaped  earth  was  made;  on  our 

side,  castles  were  built  of  sandbags  filled  with 


The  Old  Front  Line  35 

flint.  These  strongholds  gave  both  sides 
enough  observation.  The  works  face  each 
other  across  the  ponds.  The  sandbags  of  the 
English  works  have  now  rotted,  and  flag  about 
like  the  rags  of  uniform  or  like  withered  grass. 
The  flint  and  chalk  laid  bare  by  their  rotting 
look  like  the  grey  of  weathered  stone,  so  that,  at 
a  little  distance,  the  English  works  look  old  and 
noble,  as  though  they  were  the  foundations  of 
some  castle  long  since  fallen  under  Time. 

To  the  right,  that  is  to  the  southward,  from 
these  English  castles  there  is  a  slope  of  six  hun- 
dred yards  into  a  valley  or  gully.  The  slope  is 
not  in  any  way  remarkable  or  seems  not  to  be, 
except  that  the  ruin  of  a  road,  now  barely  to  be 
distinguished  from  the  field,  runs  across  it. 
The  opposing  lines  of  trenches  go  down  the 
slope,  much  as  usual,  with  the  enemy  line  above 
on  a  slight  natural  glacis.  Behind  this  enemy 
line  is  the  bulk  of  the  spur,  which  Is  partly  white 
from  up-blown  chalk,  partly  burnt  from  months 
of  fire,  and  partly  faintly  green  from  recovering 
grass.  A  little  to  the  right  or  south,  on  this 
bulk  of  spur,  there  are  the  stumps  of  trees  and 
no  grass  at  all,  nothing  but  upturned  chalk  and 
burnt  earth.  On  the  battlefield  of  the  Somme, 
these  are  the  marks  of  a  famous  place. 

The  valley  Into  which  the  slope  descends  is  a 


36  The  Old  Front  Line 

broadlsh  gentle  opening  in  the  chalk  hills,  with 
a  road  running  at  right  angles  to  the  lines  of 
trenches  at  the  bottom  of  it.  As  the  road  de- 
scends, the  valley  tightens  in,  and  just  where  the 
enemy  line  crosses  it,  it  becomes  a  narrow  deep 
glen  or  gash,  between  high  and  steep  banks  of 
chalk.  Well  within  the  enemy  position  and 
fully  seven  hundred  yards  from  our  line,  an- 
other such  glen  or  gash  runs  into  this  glen,  at 
right  angles.  At  this  meeting  place  of  the  glens 
is  or  was  the  village  of  Beaumont  Hamel,  which 
the  enemy  said  could  never  be  taken. 

For  the  moment  it  need  not  be  described;  for 
it  was  not  seen  by  many  of  our  men  in  the  early 
stages  of  the  battle.  In  fact  our  old  line  was  at 
least  five  hundred  yards  outside  it.  But  all  our 
line  in  the  valley  here  was  opposed  to  the  village 
defences,  and  the  fighting  at  this  point  was  fierce 
and  terrible,  and  there  are  some  features  in  the 
No  Man's  Land  just  outside  the  village  which 
must  be  described.  These  features  run  parallel 
with  our  line  right  down  to  the  road  in  the  val- 
ley, and  though  they  are  not  features  of  great 
tactical  importance,  like  the  patch  of  summit 
above,  where  the  craters  are,  or  like  the  wind- 
mill at  Pozieres,  they  were  the  last  things  seen 
by  many  brave  Irish  and  Enghshmen,  and  can- 
not be  passed  lightly  by. 


The  Old  Front  Line  37 

The  features  are  a  lane,  fifty  or  sixty  yards  in 
front  of  our  front  trench,  and  a  remblai  or 
lynchet  fifty  or  sixty  yards  in  front  of  the  lane. 

The  lane  is  a  farmer's  track  leading  from  the 
road  in  the  valley  to  the  road  on  the  spur.  It 
runs  almost  north  and  south,  like  the  lines  of 
trenches,  and  is  about  five  hundred  yards  long. 
From  its  start  in  the  valley-road  to  a  point  about 
two  hundred  yards  up  the  spur  it  Is  sunken  below 
the  level  of  the  field  on  each  side  of  it.  At  first 
the  sinking  is  slight,  but  it  swiftly  deepens  as  it 
goes  up  hill.  For  more  than  a  hundred  yards 
it  lies  between  banks  twelve  or  fifteen  feet  deep. 
After  this  part  the  banks  die  down  into  insignifi- 
cance, so  that  the  road  Is  nearly  open.  The 
deep  part,  which  Is  like  a  very  deep,  broad, 
natural  trench,  was  known  to  our  men  as  the 
Sunken  Road.  The  banks  of  this  sunken  part 
are  perpendicular.  Until  recently,  they  were 
grown  over  with  a  scrub  of  dwarf  beech,  ash, 
and  sturdy  saplings,  now  mostly  razed  by  fire. 
In  the  road  itself  our  men  built  up  walls  of  sand- 
bags to  limit  the  effects  of  enemy  shell  fire. 
From  these  defences  steps  cut  in  the  chalk  of  the 
bank  lead  to  the  field  above,  where  there  were 
machine-gun  pits. 

The  field  in  front  of  the  lane  (where  these 
pits  were)  is  a  fairly  smooth  slope  for  about 


38  The  Old  Front  Line 

fifty  yards.  Then  there  is  the  lynchet  or  rem- 
blai,  like  a  steep  cliff,  from  three  to  twelve  feet 
high,  hardly  to  be  noticed  from  above  until  the 
traveller  is  upon  it.  Below  this  lynchet  is  a 
fairly  smooth  slope,  so  tilted  that  it  slopes  down 
to  the  right  towards  the  valley  road,  and  slopes 
up  to  the  front  towards  the  enemy  line.  Look- 
ing straight  to  the  front  from  the  Sunken  Road 
our  men  saw  no  sudden  dip  down  at  the  lynchet, 
but  a  continuous  grassy  field,  at  first  flat,  then 
slowly  rising  towards  the  enemy  parapet.  The 
line  of  the  lynchet-top  merges  into  the  slope 
behind  it,  so  that  it  is  not  seen.  The  enemy 
line  thrusts  out  in  a  little  salient  here,  so  as  to 
make  the  most  of  a  little  bulge  of  ground  which 
was  once  wooded  and  still  has  stumps.  The 
bulge  is  now  a  heap  and  ruin  of  burnt  and 
tumbled  mud  and  chalk.  To  reach  it  our  men 
had  to  run  across  the  flat  from  the  Sunken 
Road,  slide  down  the  bank  of  the  lynchet,  and 
then  run  up  the  glacis  to  the  parapet. 

The  Sunken  Road  was  only  held  by  our  men 
as  an  advanced  post  and  "  jumping  off  "  (or  at- 
tacking) point.  Our  line  lay  behind  it  on  a 
higher  part  of  the  spur,  which  does  not  decline 
gradually  into  the  valley  road,  but  breaks  off  in 
a  steep  bank  cut  by  our  soldiers  into  a  flight  of 
chalk  steps.     These  steps  gave  to  all  this  part 


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The  Old  Front  Line  39 

of  the  line  the  name  of  Jacob's  Ladder.  From 
the  top  of  Jacob's  Ladder  there  is  a  good  view 
of  the  valley  road  running  down  into  Beaumont 
Hamel.  To  the  right  there  is  a  big  steep  knoll 
of  green  hill  bulking  up  to  the  south  of  the  val- 
ley, and  very  well  fenced  with  enemy  wire.  All 
the  land  to  the  right  or  south  of  Jacob's  Ladder 
is  this  big  green  hill,  which  is  very  steep,  Irregu- 
lar, and  broken  with  banks,  and  so  ill-adapted 
for  trenching  that  we  were  forced  to  make  our 
line  further  from  the  enemy  than  is  usual  on  the 
front.  The  front  trenches  here  are  nearly  five 
hundred  yards  apart.  As  far  as  the  hill-top  the 
enemy  line  has  a  great  advantage  of  position. 
To  reach  it  our  men  had  to  cross  the  open  and 
ascend  a  slope  which  gave  neither  dead  ground 
nor  cover  to  front  or  flank.  Low  down  the  hill, 
running  parallel  with  the  road,  is  a  little  lynchet, 
topped  by  a  few  old  hawthorn  bushes.  All  this 
bit  of  the  old  front  line  was  the  scene  of  a  most 
gallant  attack  by  our  men  on  the  ist  of  July. 
Those  who  care  may  see  It  In  the  official  cine- 
matograph films  of  the  Battle  of  the  Somme. 

Right  at  the  top  of  the  hill  there  Is  a  dark  en- 
closure of  wood,  orchard,  and  plantation,  with 
several  fairly  well  preserved  red-brick  buildings 
In  It.  This  Is  the  plateau-village  of  Auchon- 
vlllers.     On  the  slopes  below  It,  a  couple  of  hun- 


40  The  Old  Front  Line 

drcd  yards  behind  Jacob's  Ladder,  there  is  a 
little  round  clump  of  trees.  Both  village  and 
clump  make  conspicuous  landmarks.  The 
clump  was  once  the  famous  English  machine- 
gun  post  of  the  Bowery,  from  which  our  men 
could  shoot  down  the  valley  into  Beaumont 
Hamel. 

The  English  line  goes  up  the  big  green  hill,  in 
trenches  and  saps  of  reddish  clay,  to  the  plateau 
or  tableland  at  the  top.  Right  up  on  the  top, 
well  behind  our  front  line  and  close  to  one  of 
our  communication  trenches,  there  is  a  good  big 
hawthorn  bush,  in  which  a  magpie  has  built  her 
nest.  This  bush,  which  is  strangely  beautiful  in 
the  spring,  has  given  to  the  plateau  the  name  of 
the  Hawthorn  Ridge. 

Just  where  the  opposing  lines  reach  the  top 
of  the  Ridge  they  both  bend  from  their  main 
north  and  south  direction  towards  the  south- 
east, and  continue  in  that  course  for  several 
miles.  At  the  point  or  salient  of  the  bending, 
in  the  old  enemy  position,  there  is  a  crater  of  a 
mine  which  the  English  sprang  in  the  early 
morning  of  the  ist  of  July.  This  is  the  crater 
of  the  mine  of  Beaumont  Hamel.  Until  re- 
cently it  was  supposed  to  be  the  biggest  crater 
ever  blown  by  one  explosion.  It  is  not  the 
deepest :  one  or  two  others  near  La  Boisselle  are 


The  Old  Front  Line  41 

deeper,  but  none  on  the  Somme  field  comes  near 
it  in  bigness  and  squalor.  It  is  like  the  crater  of 
a  volcano,  vast,  ragged,  and  irregular,  about  one 
hundred  and  fifty  yards  long,  one  hundred  yards 
across,  and  twenty-five  yards  deep.  It  is 
crusted  and  scabbed  with  yellowish  tetter,  like 
sulphur  or  the  rancid  fat  on  meat.  The  inside 
has  rather  the  look  of  meat,  for  it  is  reddish 
and  all  streaked  and  scabbed  with  this  pox  and 
with  discoloured  chalk.  A  lot  of  it  trickles  and 
oozes  like  sores  discharging  pus,  and  this  liquid 
gathers  in  holes  near  the  bottom,  and  is  greenish 
and  foul  and  has  the  look  of  dead  eyes  staring 
upwards. 

All  that  can  be  seen  of  it  from  the  English 
line  is  a  disarrangement  of  the  enemy  wire  and 
parapet.  It  is  a  hole  in  the  ground  which  can- 
not be  seen  except  from  quite  close  at  hand.  At 
first  sight,  on  looking  into  it,  it  is  difficult  to  be- 
lieve that  it  was  the  work  of  man;  it  looks  so 
like  nature  in  her  evil  mood.  It  is  hard  to 
imagine  that  only  three  years  ago  that  hill  was 
cornfield,  and  the  site  of  the  chasm  grew  bread. 
After  that  happy  time,  the  enemy  bent  his  line 
there  and  made  the  salient  a  stronghold,  and 
dug  deep  shelters  for  his  men  in  the  walls  of  his 
trenches ;  the  marks  of  the  dugouts  are  still  plain 
in  the  sides  of  the  pit.     Then,  on  the  ist  of  July, 


42  The  Old  Front  Line 

when  the  explosion  was  to  be  a  signal  for  the 
attack,  and  our  men  waited  in  the  trenches  for 
the  spring,  the  belly  of  the  chalk  was  heaved, 
and  chalk,  clay,  dugouts,  gear,  and  enemy,  went 
up  in  a  dome  of  blackness  full  of  pieces,  and 
spread  aloft  like  a  toadstool,  and  floated,  and 
fell  down. 

From  the  top  of  the  Hawthorn  Ridge,  our 
soldiers  could  see  a  great  expanse  of  chalk 
downland,  though  the  falling  of  the  hill  kept 
them  from  seeing  the  enemy's  position.  That 
lay  on  the  slope  of  the  ridge,  somewhere  behind 
the  wire,  quite  out  of  sight  from  our  lines. 
Looking  out  from  our  front  line  at  this  salient, 
our  men  saw  the  enemy  wire  almost  as  a  skyline. 
Beyond  this  line,  the  ground  dipped  towards 
Beaumont  Hamel  (which  was  quite  out  of  sight 
In  the  valley)  and  rose  again  sharply  in  the 
steep  bulk  of  Beaucourt  spur.  Beyond  this 
lonely  spur,  the  hills  ranked  and  ran,  like  the 
masses  of  a  moor,  first  the  high  ground  above 
MIraumont,  and  beyond  that  the  high  ground  of 
the  Loupart  Wood,  and  away  to  the  east  the 
bulk  that  makes  the  left  bank  of  the  Ancre 
River.  What  trees  there  are  in  this  moorland 
were  not  then  all  blasted.  Even  in  Beaumont 
Hamel  some  of  the  trees  were  green.  The 
trees  in  the  Ancre  River  Valley  made  all  that 


> 


iW 


The  Old  Front  Line  43 

marshy  meadow  like  a  forest.  Looking  out  on 
all  this,  the  first  thought  of  the  soldier  was  that 
here  he  could  really  see  something  of  the 
enemy's  ground. 

It  is  true,  that  from  this  hill-top  much  land, 
then  held  by  the  enemy,  could  be  seen,  but  very 
little  that  was  vital  to  the  enemy  could  be  ob- 
served. His  lines  of  supply  and  support  ran 
in  ravines  which  we  could  not  see ;  his  batteries 
lay  beyond  crests,  his  men  were  in  hiding  places. 
Just  below  us  on  the  lower  slopes  of  this  Haw- 
thorn Ridge  he  had  one  vast  hiding  place  which 
gave  us  a  great  deal  of  trouble.  This  was  a 
gully  or  ravine,  about  five  hundred  yards  long, 
well  within  his  position,  running  (roughly  speak- 
ing) at  right  angles  with  his  front  line.  Prob- 
ably it  was  a  steep  and  deep  natural  fold  made 
steeper  and  deeper  by  years  of  cultivation.  It 
is  from  thirty  to  forty  feet  deep,  and  about  as 
much  across  at  the  top;  it  has  abrupt  sides,  and 
thrusts  out  two  forks  to  its  southern  side. 
These  forks  give  it  the  look  of  a  letter  Y  upon 
the  maps,  for  which  reason  both  the  French  and 
ourselves  called  the  place  the  *'  Ravin  en  Y  " 
or  "  Y  Ravine."  Part  of  the  southernmost 
fork  was  slightly  open  to  observation  from  our 
lines ;  the  main  bulk  of  the  gully  was  invisible  to 
us,  except  from  the  air. 


44  The  Old  Front  Line 

Whenever  the  enemy  has  had  a  bank  of  any 
kind,  at  all  screened  from  fire,  he  has  dug  into  it 
for  shelter.  In  the  Y  Ravine,  which  provided 
these  great  expanses  of  banks,  he  dug  himself 
shelters  of  unusual  strength  and  size.  He 
sank  shafts  into  the  banks,  tunnelled  long  living 
rooms,  both  above  and  below  the  gully-bottom, 
linked  the  rooms  together  with  galleries,  and 
cut  hatchways  and  bolting  holes  to  lead  to  the 
surface  as  well  as  to  the  gully.  All  this  work 
was  securely  done,  with  balks  of  seasoned 
wood,  iron  girders,  and  concreting.  Much  of 
it  was  destroyed  by  shell  fire  during  the  battle, 
but  much  not  hit  by  shells  is  in  good  condition 
to-day  even  after  the  autumn  rains  and  the 
spring  thaw.  The  galleries  which  lead  upwards 
and  outwards  from  this  underground  barracks 
to  the  observation  posts  and  machine-gun  em- 
placements in  the  open  air,  are  cunningly 
planned  and  solidly  made.  The  posts  and  em- 
placements to  which  they  led  are  now,  however, 
(nearly  all)  utterly  destroyed  by  our  shell  fire. 

In  this  gully  barracks,  and  in  similar  shelters 
cut  in  the  chalk  of  the  steeper  banks  near  Beau- 
mont Hamel,  the  enemy  could  hold  ready  large 
numbers  of  men  to  repel  an  attack  or  to  make  a 
counter-attack.  They  lived  in  these  dugouts  in 
comparative  safety  and  in  moderate  comfort. 


The  Old  Front  Line  45 

When  our  attacks  came  during  the  early  months 
of  the  battle,  they  were  able  to  pass  rapidly  and 
safely  by  these  underground  galleries  from  one 
part  of  the  position  to  another,  bringing  their 
machine  guns  with  them.  However,  the  Ra- 
vine was  presently  taken  and  the  galleries  and 
underground  shelters  were  cleared.  In  one  un- 
derground room  in  that  barracks,  nearly  fifty 
of  the  enemy  were  found  lying  dead  in  their 
bunks,  all  unwounded,  and  as  though  asleep. 
They  had  been  killed  by  the  concussion  of  the 
air  following  on  the  burst  of  a  big  shell  at  the 
entrance. 

One  other  thing  may  be  mentioned  about  this 
Hawthorn  Ridge.  It  runs  parallel  with  the 
next  spur  (the  Beaucourt  spur)  immediately  to 
the  north  of  it,  then  in  the  enemy's  hands.  Just 
over  the  crest  of  this  spur,  out  of  sight  from  our 
lines,  is  a  country  road,  well  banked  and 
screened,  leading  from  Beaucourt  to  Serre. 
This  road  was  known  by  our  men  as  Artillery 
Lane,  because  it  was  used  as  a  battery  position 
by  the  enemy.  The  wrecks  of  several  of  his 
guns  lie  In  the  mud  there  still.  From  the  crest 
in  front  of  this  road  there  is  a  view  to  the  west- 
ward, so  wonderful  that  those  who  see  It  realize 
at  once  that  the  enemy  position  on  the  Ridge, 
which,  at  a  first  glance,  seems  badly  sited  for 


46  The  Old  Front  Line 

observation,  is,  really,  well  placed.  From  this 
crest,  the  Ridge-top,  all  our  old  front  line,  and 
nearly  all  the  No  Man's  Land  upon  it,  is  ex- 
posed, and  plainly  to  be  seen.  On  a  reasonably 
clear  day,  no  man  could  leave  our  old  line  un- 
seen from  this  crest.  No  artillery  officer,  cor- 
recting the  fire  of  a  battery,  could  ask  for  a  bet- 
ter place  from  which  to  watch  the  bursts  of  his 
shells.  This  crest,  in  front  of  the  lane  of  enemy 
guns,  made  it  possible  for  the  enemy  batteries  to 
drop  shells  upon  our  front  line  trenches  before 
all  the  men  were  out  of  them  at  the  instant  of 
the  great  attack. 

The  old  English  line  runs  along  the  Haw- 
thorn Ridge-top  for  some  hundreds  of  yards, 
and  then  crosses  a  dip  or  valley,  which  is  the 
broad,  fanshaped,  southern  end  of  a  fork  of  Y 
Ravine.  A  road  runs,  or  ran,  down  this  dip 
into  the  Y  Ravine.  It  is  not  now  recognisable 
as  a  road,  but  the  steep  banks  at  each  side  of  it, 
and  some  bluish  metalling  in  the  shell  holes, 
show  that  one  once  ran  there.  These  banks  are 
covered  with  hawthorn  bushes.  A  remblai, 
also  topped  with  hawthorn,  lies  a  little  to  the 
north  of  this  road. 

From  this  lynchet,  looking  down  the  valley 
into  the  Y  Ravine,  the  enemy  position  is  saddle- 
shaped,  low  in  the  middle,  where  the  Y  Ravine 


The  Old  Front  Line  47 

narrows,  and  rising  to  right  and  left  to  a  good 
height.  Chalk  hills  from  their  form  often  seem 
higher  than  they  really  are,  especially  in  any 
kind  of  haze.  Often  they  have  mystery  and 
nearly  always  beauty.  For  some  reason,  the 
lumping  rolls  of  chalk  hill  rising  up  on  each  side 
of  this  valley  have  a  menace  and  a  horror  about 
them.  One  sees  little  of  the  enemy  position 
from  the  English  line.  It  is  now  nothing  but  a 
track  of  black  wire  in  front  of  some  burnt  and 
battered  heapings  of  the  ground,  upon  which 
the  grass  and  the  flowers  have  only  now^  begun 
to  push.  At  the  beginning  of  the  battle  it  must 
have  been  greener  and  fresher,  for  then  the  fire 
of  hell  had  not  come  upon  it;  but  even  then, 
even  in  the  summer  day,  that  dent  in  the  chalk 
leading  to  the  Y  Ravine  must  have  seemed  a 
threatening  and  forbidding  place. 

Our  line  goes  along  the  top  of  the  ridge  here, 
at  a  good  distance  from  the  enemy  line.  It  is 
dug  on  the  brow  of  the  plateau  in  reddish  earth 
on  the  top  of  chalk.  It  is  now  much  as  our  men 
left  it  for  the  last  time.  The  trench-ladders  by 
which  they  left  it  are  still  In  place  In  the  bays  of 
the  trenches.  All  the  outer,  or  jumping-off, 
trenches,  are  much  destroyed  by  enemy  shell  fire, 
which  was  very  heavy  here  from  both  sides  of 
the  Ancre  River.     A  quarter  of  a  mile  to  the 


48  The  Old  Front  Line 

southeast  of  the  Y  Ravine  the  line  comes  within 
sight  of  the  great  gap  which  cuts  the  battlefield 
in  two.  This  gap  is  the  valley  of  the  Ancre 
River,  which  runs  here  beneath  great  spurs  of 
chalk,  as  the  Thames  runs  at  Goring  and  Pang- 
bourne.  On  the  lonely  hill,  where  this  first 
comes  plainly  into  view,  as  one  travels  south 
along  the  line,  there  used  to  be  two  bodies  of 
English  soldiers,  buried  once,  and  then  unburied 
by  the  rain.  They  lay  in  the  No  Man's  Land, 
outside  the  English  wire,  in  what  was  then  one 
of  the  loneliest  places  in  the  field.  The  ruin  of 
war  lay  all  round  them. 

There  are  many  English  graves  (marked, 
then,  hurriedly,  by  the  man's  rifle  thrust  into  the 
ground)  in  that  piece  of  the  line.  On  a  windy 
day,  these  rifles  shook  in  the  wind  as  the  bay- 
onets bent  to  the  blast.  The  field  testaments  of 
both  men  lay  open  beside  them  in  the  mud. 
The  rain  and  the  mud  together  had  nearly  de- 
stroyed the  little  books,  but  in  each  case  it  was 
possible  to  read  one  text.  In  both  cases,  the 
text  which  remained,  read  with  a  strange  irony. 
The  one  book,  beside  a  splendid  youth,  cut  off  in 
his  promise,  was  open  at  a  text  which  ran, 
"  And  Moses  was  learned  in  all  the  wisdom  of 
the  Egyptians  and  mighty  in  word  and  in  deed." 
The  other  book,  beside  one  who  had  been  killed 


E 


o 

D, 
Q, 
O 


c 

< 


The  Old  Front  Line  49 

in  an  attack  which  did  not  succeed  at  the  mo- 
ment, but  which  led  to  the  falling  back  of  the 
enemy  nation  from  many  miles  of  conquered 
ground,  read  even  more  strangely.  It  was  open 
at  the  eighty-ninth  Psalm,  and  the  only  legible 
words  were,  ''  Thou  hast  broken  down  all  his 
hedges;  thou  hast  brought  his  strong  holds  to 
ruin.'* 

From  the  hill-top  where  these  graves  are  the 
lines  droop  down  towards  the  second  of  the  four 
roads,  which  runs  here  in  the  Ancre  valley 
parallel  with  the  river  and  the  railway.  The 
slope  is  steep  and  the  ground  broken  with  shal- 
low gullies  and  lynchets.  Well  down  towards 
the  river,  just  above  the  road,  a  flattish  piece  of 
land  leads  to  a  ravine  with  steep  and  high  banks. 
This  flattish  land,  well  within  the  enemy  line, 
was  the  scene  of  very  desperate  fighting  on  the 
1st  of  July. 

Looking  at  the  enemy  line  in  front  of  our  own 
line  here,  one  sees  little  but  a  gentle  crest,  pro- 
tected by  wire,  in  front  of  another  gentle  crest, 
also  wired,  with  other  gentle  crests  beyond  and 
to  the  left.  To  the  right  there  is  a  blur  of 
gentle  crests  behind  tree-tops.  It  is  plain  from 
a  glance  that  gullies  run  irregularly  into  the 
spurs  here,  and  make  the  defence  easy.  All 
through  the  fighting  here,  it  happened  too  often 


50  The  Old  Front  Line 

that  the  taking  of  one  crest  only  meant  that  the 
winners  were  taken  in  flank  by  machine  guns  in 
the  crest  beyond,  and  (in  this  bit  of  the  line) 
by  other  guns  on  the  other  side  of  the  river. 

Well  to  the  back  of  the  English  line  here,  on 
the  top  of  the  plateau,  level  with  Auchonvillers, 
some  trees  stand  upon  the  skyline,  with  the 
tower  of  a  church,  battered,  but  not  destroyed, 
like  the  banner  of  some  dauntless  one,  a  little 
to  the  west  of  the  wood.  The  wood  shows 
marks  of  shelling,  but  nothing  like  the  marks 
on  the  woods  attacked  by  our  own  men.  There 
are  signs  of  houses  among  the  trees,  and  the  line 
of  a  big  wood  to  the  east  of  them. 

This  church  and  the  buildings  near  it  are 
parts  of  Mesnil  village,  most  of  which  lies  out 
of  sight  on  the  further  side  of  the  crest.  They 
are  conspicuous  landmarks,  and  can  be  made  out 
from  many  parts  of  the  field.  The  chalk  scarp 
on  which  they  stand  is  by  much  the  most  beauti- 
ful thing  on  the  battlefield,  and  the  sight  of 
Mesnil  church  tower  on  the  top  of  it  is  most 
pleasant.  That  little  banner  stood  all  through 
the  war,  and  not  all  the  guns  of  the  enemy  could 
bring  it  down.  Many  men  in  the  field  near 
Mesnil,  enduring  the  mud  of  the  thaw,  and  the 
lice,  wet,  and  squalor  of  dugouts  near  the  front, 
were  cheered  by  that  church  tower.     "  For  all 


The  Old  Front  Line  51 

their  bloody  talk  the  bastards  couldn't  bring  it 
down." 

The  hill  with  the  lines  upon  it  slopes  steeply 
down  to  the  valley  of  the  Ancre.  Just  where 
the  lines  come  to  the  valley,  the  ground  drops 
abruptly,  in  a  cliff  or  steep  bank,  twenty-five  feet 
high,  to  the  road. 

Our  line  on  this  slope  covers  the  village  of 
Hamel,  which  lies  just  behind  the  line,  along 
the  road  and  on  the  hill-slopes  above  it.  The 
church  and  churchyard  of  Hamel,  both  utterly 
ruined,  lie  well  up  the  hill  in  such  a  position  that 
they  made  good  posts  from  which  our  snipers 
could  shoot  across  the  river  at  men  in  the 
Schwaben  Redoubt.  Crocuses,  snowdrops,  and 
a  purple  flower  once  planted  on  the  graves  of 
the  churchyard,  but  now  escaped  into  the  field, 
blossomed  here  in  this  wintry  spring,  long  be- 
fore any  other  plant  on  the  battlefield  was  in 
bud. 

Hamel  in  peace  time  may  have  contained 
forty  houses,  some  shatters  of  which  still  stand. 
There  are  a  few  red-brick  walls,  some  frames 
of  wood  from  which  the  plaster  has  been  blown, 
some  gardens  gone  wild,  fruit  trees  unpruned 
and  more  or  less  ragged  from  fire,  and  an  air  of 
desecration  and  desertion.  In  some  of  the 
ruins    there    are    signs    of    use.     The    lower 


52  The  Old  Front  Line 

windows  are  filled  with  sandbags,  the  lower 
stories  are  strengthened  with  girders  and 
baulks.  From  the  main  road  in  the  valley,  a 
country  track  or  road,  muddy  even  for  the 
Somme,  leads  up  the  hill,  through  the  heart  of 
the  village,  past  the  church,  towards  our  old  line 
and  Auchonvillers. 

Not  much  can  be  seen  from  the  valley  road  in 
Hamel,  for  it  is  only  a  few  feet  above  the  level 
of  the  river-bed,  which  is  well  grown  with 
timber  not  yet  completely  destroyed.  The  gen- 
eral view  to  the  eastward  from  this  low-lying 
road  is  that  of  a  lake,  five  hundred  yards  across, 
in  some  wild  land  not  yet  settled.  The  lake  is 
shallow,  blind  with  reeds,  vivid  with  water- 
grass,  and  lively  with  moor-fowl.  The  trees 
grow  out  of  the  water,  or  lie  in  it,  just  as  they 
fell  when  they  were  shot.  On  the  whole,  the 
trees  just  here,  though  chipped  and  knocked 
about,  have  not  suffered  badly;  they  have  the 
look  of  trees,  and  are  leafy  in  summer. 
Beyond  the  trees,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
marsh,  is  the  steep  and  high  eastern  bank  of 
the  Ancre,  on  which  a  battered  wood,  called 
Thiepval  Wood,  stands  like  an  army  of  black 
and  haggard  rampikes.  But  for  this  stricken 
wood,  the  eastern  bank  of  the  Ancre  is  a  gentle, 


The  Old  Front  Line  53 

sloping  hill,  bare  of  trees.  On  the  top  of  this 
hill  is  the  famous  Schwaben  Redoubt. 

The  Ancre  River  and  the  marshy  valley 
through  which  it  runs  are  crossed  by  sev- 
eral causeways.  One  most  famous  causeway 
crosses  just  in  front  of  Hamel  on  the  line  of 
the  old  Mill  Road.  The  Mill  from  which  it 
takes  its  name  lies  to  the  left  of  the  causeway 
on  a  sort  of  green  island.  The  wheel,  which  is 
not  destroyed,  still  shows  among  the  ruins. 
The  enemy  had  a  dressing  station  there  at  one 
time. 

The  marshy  valley  of  the  Ancre  splits  up  the 
river  here  into  several  channels  besides  the  mill 
stream.  The  channels  are  swift  and  deep,  full 
of  exquisitely  clear  water  just  out  of  the  chalk. 
The  marsh  is  rather  blind  with  snags  cut  off 
by  shells.  For  some  years  past  the  moor-fowl 
in  the  marsh  have  been  little  molested.  They 
are  very  numerous  here;  their  cries  make  the 
place  lonely  and  romantic. 

When  one  stands  on  this  causeway  over  the 
Ancre  one  is  almost  at  the  middle  point  of  the 
battlefield,  for  the  river  cuts  the  field  in  two. 
Roughly  speaking,  the  ground  to  the  west  of 
the  river  was  the  scene  of  containing  fighting, 
the  ground  to  the  east  of  the  river  the  scene  of 


54  The  Old  Front  Line 

our  advance.  At  the  eastern  end  of  the  cause- 
way the  Old  Mill  Road  rises  towards  the 
Schwaben  Redoubt. 

All  the  way  up  the  hill  the  road  is  steep, 
rather  deep  and  bad.  It  is  worn  into  the  chalk 
and  shows  up  very  white  in  sunny  weather. 
Before  the  battle  it  lay  about  midway  between 
the  lines,  but  it  was  always  patrolled  at  night  by 
our  men.  The  ground  on  both  sides  of  it  is 
almost  more  killed  and  awful  than  anywhere 
in  the  field.  On  the  English  or  south  side  of  it, 
distant  from  one  hundred  to  two  hundred  yards, 
is  the  shattered  wood,  burnt,  dead,  and  deso- 
late. On  the  enemy  side,  at  about  the  same  dis- 
tance, is  the  usual  black  enemy  wire,  much 
tossed  and  bunched  by  our  shells,  covering  a 
tossed  and  tumbled  chalky  and  filthy  parapet. 
Our  own  old  line  is  an  array  of  rotted  sand- 
bags, filled  with  chalkflint,  covering  the  burnt 
wood.  One  need  only  look  at  the  ground  to 
know  that  the  fighting  here  was  very  grim,  and 
to  the  death.  Near  the  road  and  up  the  slope 
to  the  enemy  the  ground  is  littered  with  relics 
of  our  charges,  mouldy  packs,  old  shattered 
scabbards,  rifles,  bayonets,  helmets  curled, 
torn,  rolled,  and  starred,  clips  of  cartridges, 
and  very  many  graves.     Many  of  the  graves 


The  Old  Front  Line  55 

are  marked  with  strips  of  wood  torn  from  pack- 
ing cases,  with  pencilled  inscriptions,  ''  An  un- 
known British  Hero  "  ;  "  In  loving  memory  of 

Pte. ";  "  Two  unknown  British  heroes  "  ; 

"  An  unknown  British  soldier "  ;  "A  dead 
Fritz."  That  gentle  slope  to  the  Schwaben  is 
covered  with  such  things. 

Passing  these  things,  by  some  lane  through 
the  wire  and  clambering  over  the  heaps  of  earth 
which  were  once  the  parapet,  one  enters  the 
Schwaben,  where  so  much  life  was  spent.  As 
in  so  many  places  on  this  old  battlefield,  the  first 
thought  is:  "Why,  they  were  in  an  eyrie 
here ;  our  fellows  had  no  chance  at  all."  There 
Is  no  wonder,  then,  that  the  approach  is  strewn 
with  graves.  The  line  stands  at  the  top  of  a 
smooth,  open  slope,  commanding  our  old  posi- 
tion and  the  Ancre  Valley.  There  Is  no  cover 
of  any  kind  upon  the  slope  except  the  rims  of  the 
shell-holes,  which  make  rings  of  mud  among 
the  grass.  Just  outside  the  highest  point  of  the 
front  line  there  is  a  little  clump  of  our  graves. 
Just  inside  there  is  a  still  unshattered  concrete 
fortlet,  built  for  the  machine  gun  by  which  those 
men  were  killed. 

All  along  that  front  trench  of  the  Schwaben, 
lying  on  the  parapet,  half  buried  In  the  mud, 
are  the   belts  of  machine   guns,   still   full  of 


56  The  Old  Front  Line 

cartridges.  There  were  many  machine  guns  on 
that  earthen  wall  last  year.  When  our  men 
scrambled  over  the  tumbled  chalky  line  of  old 
sandbags,  so  plain  just  down  the  hill,  and  came 
into  view  on  the  slope,  running  and  stumbling 
in  the  hour  of  the  attack,  the  machine  gunners  In 
the  fortress  felt  indeed  that  they  were  in  an 
eyrie,  and  that  our  fellows  had  no  chance  at 
all. 

For  the  moment  one  thinks  this,  as  the  enemy 
gunners  must  have  thought  it;  then,  looking  up 
the  hill  at  the  inner  works  of  the  great  fort,  the 
thought  comes  that  it  was  not  so  happy  a  fate 
to  have  to  hold  this  eyrie.  Sometimes,  in 
winter  storms,  the  Atlantic  is  heaved  aloft  and 
tossed  and  tumbled  under  an  evil  heaven  till 
all  its  wilderness  Is  hideous.  This  hill-top  is 
exactly  as  though  some  such  welter  of  water  had 
suddenly  become  mud.  It  is  all  heaped  and 
tossed  and  tumbled  as  though  the  earth  there 
had  been  a  cross-sea.  In  one  place  some  great 
earth  wave  of  a  trench  has  been  bitten  into  and 
beaten  back  and  turned  blind  into  an  eddy  by 
great  pits  and  chasms  and  running  heaps. 
Then  in  another  place,  where  the  crqwn  of  the 
work  once  reared  Itself  aloft  over  the  hill,  the 
heaps  of  mud  are  all  blurred  and  pounded  to- 
gether, so  that  there  is  no  design,  no  trace,  no 


The  Old  Front  Line  57 

visible  plan  of  any  fortress,  only  a  mess  of  mud 
bedevilled  and  bewildered.  All  this  mess  of 
heaps  and  hillocks  Is  strung  and  filthled  over 
with  broken  bodies  and  ruined  gear.  There  is 
nothing  whole,  nor  alive,  nor  clean.  In  all  its 
extent;  it  is  a  place  of  ruin  and  death,  blown 
and  blasted  out  of  any  likeness  to  any  work 
of  man,  and  so  smashed  that  there  is  no  shelter 
on  It,  save  for  the  one  machine  gunner  In  his 
box.  On  all  that  desolate  hill  our  fire  fell  like 
rain  for  days  and  nights  and  weeks,  till  the 
watchers  In  our  line  could  see  no  hill  at  all,  but 
a  great,  vague,  wreathing  devil  of  darkness  In 
which  little  sudden  fires  winked  and  glimmered 
and  disappeared. 

Once  In  a  lull  of  the  firing  a  woman  ap- 
peared upon  the  enemy  parapet  and  started  to 
walk  along  It.  Our  men  held  their  fire  and 
watched  her.  She  walked  steadily  along  the 
whole  front  of  the  Schwaben  and  then  jumped 
down  Into  her  trench.  Many  thought  at  the 
time  that  she  was  a  man  masquerading  for  a 
bet,  but  long  afterwards,  when  our  men  took 
the  Schwaben,  they  found  her  lying  In  the  ruins 
dead.  They  buried  her  there,  up  on  the  top 
of  the  hill.  God  alone  knows  who  she  was  and 
what  she  was  doing  there. 

Looking  back  across  the  Ancre   from  the 


58  The  Old  Front  Line 

Schwaben  the  hill  of  the  right  bank  of  the  river 
Is  clear  from  the  woods  near  Mesnil  to  Beau- 
court.  All  along  that  graceful  chalk  hill  our 
communication  trenches  thrust  up  like  long 
white  mole-runs,  or  like  the  comb  of  rollers 
on  a  reef.  At  right  angles  to  these  long  white 
lines  are  black  streaks  which  mark  the  enemy's 
successive  front  lines.  The  later  ones  are 
visibly  more  ragged  than  those  near  our  old 
line. 

There  are  few  more  lonely  places  than  that 
scene  of  old  battles.  One  may  stand  on  the 
Schwaben  for  many  days  together  and  look  west 
over  the  moor,  or  east  over  the  wilderness, 
without  seeing  any  sign  of  human  life,  save  per- 
haps some  solitary  guarding  a  dump  of  stores. 

The  hill  on  which  the  Schwaben  is  built  is 
like  a  great  thumb  laid  down  beside  the  Ancre 
River.  There  is  a  little  valley  on  its  eastern 
side  exactly  like  the  space  between  a  great 
thumb  and  a  great  forefinger.  It  is  called 
Crucifix  Valley,  from  an  iron  Calvary  that 
stood  In  it  In  the  early  days  of  the  war.  It  must 
once  have  been  a  lovely  and  romantic  glen, 
strangely  beautiful  throughout.  Even  now  its 
lower  reach  between  a  steep  bank  of  scrub 
and  Thiepval  Wood  is  as  lovely  as  a  place  can 
be  after  the  passing  of  a  cyclone.     Its  upper 


The  Old  Front  Line  59 

reach,  which  makes  the  eastern  boundary  of  the 
Schwaben,  is  as  ghastly  a  scene  of  smash  as 
the  world  can  show.  It  is  nothing  but  a  collec- 
tion of  irregular  pools  dug  by  big  shells  during 
months  of  battle.  The  pools  are  long  enough 
and  deep  enough  to  dive  into,  and  full  to  over- 
flowing with  filthy  water.  Sometimes  the  pres- 
sure of  the  water  bursts  the  mud  banks  of  one 
of  these  pools  and  a  rush  of  water  comes,  and 
the  pools  below  it  overflow,  and  a  noise  of 
water  rises  in  that  solitude  which  is  like  the 
mud  and  water  of  the  beginning  of  the  world 
before  any  green  thing  appeared. 

Our  line  runs  across  this  Crucifix  Valley  in  a 
strong  sandbag  barricade.  The  enemy  line 
crosses  it  higher  up  in  a  continuation  of  the 
front  line  of  the  Schwaben.  As  soon  as  the 
lines  are  across  the  valley  they  turn  sharply  to 
the  south  at  an  important  point. 

The  Schwaben  spur  Is  like  a  thumb;  Crucifix 
Valley  is  like  the  space  between  a  thumb  and  a 
forefinger.  Just  to  the  east  of  Crucifix  Valley 
a  second  spur  thrusts  away  down  to  the  south 
like  a  forefinger.  It  is  a  long  sloping  spur, 
wooded  at  the  lower  end.  It  Is  known  on  the 
maps  as  Thiepval  Hill  or  the  Leipzig  Salient. 
When  the  lines  turn  to  the  south  after  crossing 
Crucifix  Valley  they  run  along  the  side  of  this 


6o  The  Old  Front  Line 

hill  and  pass  out  of  sight  round  the  end.  The 
lines  are  quite  regular  and  distinct.  From  the 
top  of  the  Schwaben  it  looks  as  though  the 
side  of  the  hill  were  fenced  into  a  neat  green 
track  or  racecourse.  This  track  is  the  No 
Man's  Land,  which  lies  like  a  broad  green 
regular  stripe  between  brown  expanses  along 
the  hillside.  All  this  hill  was  of  the  greatest 
importance  to  the  enemy.  It  was  as  strong  an 
eyrie  as  the  Schwaben;  it  turned  and  made  very 
dangerous  our  works  in  front  of  Hamel;  and 
it  was  the  key  to  a  covered  way  to  the  plateau 
from  which  all  these  spurs  thrust  southward. 

It  is  a  bolder,  more  regular  spur  than  the 
others  which  thrust  from  this  plateau.  The 
top  slopes  so  slightly  as  to  be  almost  level,  the 
two  flanks  are  rather  steep. 

Right  at  the  top  of  it,  just  where  it  springs 
from  the  plateau,  much  where  the  knuckle  of  the 
imagined  hand  would  be,  and  perhaps  five 
hundred  yards  east  from  our  old  sandbag  bar- 
ricade in  Crucifix  Valley,  there  is  a  redness  in 
the  battered  earth  and  upon  the  chalk  of  the 
road.  The  redness  is  patchy  over  a  good  big 
stretch  of  this  part  of  the  spur,  but  it  Is  all  with- 
in the  enemy  lines  and  well  above  our  own. 
Where  the  shattered  hillside  slopes  towards  our 
lines  there  are  many  remnants  of  trees,  some  of 


The  Old  Front  Line  6i 

them  fruit  trees  arranged  In  a  kind  of  order  be- 
hind the  burnt  relics  of  a  hedge,  others  dotted 
about  at  random.  All  are  burnt,  blasted,  and 
killed.  One  need  only  glance  at  the  hill  on 
which  they  stand  to  see  that  it  has  been  more 
burnt  and  shell-smitten  than  most  parts  of  the 
lines.  It  is  as  though  the  fight  here  had  been 
more  than  to  the  death,  to  beyond  death,  to  the 
bones  and  skeleton  of  the  corpse  which  was  yet 
unkillable.  This  is  the  site  of  the  little  hill 
village  of  Thiepval,  which  once  stood  at  a  cross- 
roads here  among  apple  orchards  and  the  trees 
of  a  park.  It  had  a  church,  just  at  the  junction 
of  the  roads,  and  a  fine  siegneurial  chateau,  in  a 
garden,  beside  the  church;  otherwise  it  was  a  lit- 
tle lonely  mean  place,  built  of  brick  and  plaster 
on  a  great  lonely  heap  of  chalk  downland.  It 
had  no  importance  and  no  history  before  the 
war,  except  that  a  Seigneur  of  Thiepval  is  men- 
tioned as  having  once  attended  a  meeting  at 
Amiens.  It  was  of  great  military  importance 
at  the  time  of  the  Battle  of  the  Somme.  In  the 
old  days  it  may  have  had  a  beauty  of  position. 

It  is  worth  while  to  clamber  up  to  Thiepval 
from  our  lines.  The  road  runs  through  the 
site  of  the  village  in  a  deep  cutting,  which  may 
have  once  been  lovely.  The  road  is  reddish 
with  the  smashed  bricks  of  the  village.     Here 


62  The  Old  Front  Line 

and  there  In  the  mud  are  perhaps  three  courses 
of  brick  where  a  house  once  stood,  or  some 
hideous  hole  bricked  at  the  bottom  for  the 
vault  of  a  cellar.  Blasted,  dead,  pitted  stumps 
of  trees,  with  their  bark  in  rags,  grow  here  and 
there  in  a  collection  of  vast  holes,  ten  feet  deep 
and  fifteen  feet  across,  with  filthy  water  in  them. 
There  is  nothing  left  of  the  church;  a  big  red- 
dish mound  of  brick,  that  seems  mainly  powder 
round  a  core  of  cement,  still  marks  where  the 
chateau  stood.  The  chateau  garden,  the  round 
village  pond,  the  pine-tree  which  was  once  a 
landmark  there,  are  all  blown  out  of  recogni- 
tion. 

The  mud  of  the  Somme,  which  will  be  re- 
membered by  our  soldiers  long  after  they  have 
forgotten  the  shelling,  was  worse  at  Thiepval 
than  elsewhere,  or,  at  least,  could  not  have  been 
worse  elsewhere.  The  road  through  Thiepval 
was  a  bog,  the  village  was  a  quagmire.  Near 
the  chateau  there  were  bits  where  one  sank  to 
the  knee.  In  the  great  battle  for  Thiepval,  on 
the  26th  of  last  September,  one  of  our  Tanks 
charged  an  enemy  trench  here.  It  plunged  and 
stuck  fast  and  remained  in  the  mud,  like  a  great 
animal  stricken  dead  in  its  spring.  It  was  one 
of  the  sights  of  Thiepval  during  the  winter. 


The  Old  Front  Line  63 

for  It  looked  most  splendid;  afterwards,  it  was 
salved  and  went  to  fight  again. 

From  this  part  of  Thiepval  one  can  look 
along  the  top  of  the  Leipzig  Spur,  which  begins 
here  and  thrusts  to  the  south  for  a  thousand 
yards. 

There  are  two  big  enemy  works  on  the  Leip- 
zig Spur:  one,  well  to  the  south  of  the  village, 
is  (or  was,  for  it  is  all  blown  out  of  shape) 
a  six-angled  star-shaped  redoubt  called  the 
Wonder  Work;  the  other,  still  further  to  the 
south,  about  a  big,  disused,  and  very  evil-look- 
ing quarry,  towards  the  end  of  the  spur,  is,  or 
was,  called  the  Leipzig  Salient,  or,  by  some 
people,  the  Hohenzollern,  from  the  Hohen- 
zollern  Trench,  which  ran  straight  across  the 
spur  about  halfway  down  the  salient. 

In  these  two  fortresses  the  enemy  had  two 
strong,  evil  eyries,  high  above  us.  They  look 
down  upon  our  line,  which  runs  along  the  side 
of  the  hill  below  them.  Though,  in  the  end, 
our  guns  blasted  the  enemy  off  the  hill,  our  line 
along  that  slope  was  a  costly  one  to  hold,  since 
fire  upon  it  could  be  observed  and  directed  from 
so  many  points  —  from  the  rear  (above 
Hamel),  from  the  left  flank  (on  the  Schwaben 
and  near  Thiepval),  and  from  the  hill  itself. 


64  The  Old  Front  Line 

The  hill  Is  all  skinned  and  scarred,  and  the  trace 
of  the  great  works  can  no  longer  be  followed. 
At  the  top  of  the  hill,  in  the  middle  of  a  filthy 
big  pool,  is  a  ruined  enemy  trench-mortar, 
sitting  up  like  a  swollen  toad. 

At  the  end  of  the  spur  the  lines  curve  round 
to  the  east  to  shut  in  the  hill.  A  grass-grown 
road  crosses  the  lines  here,  goes  up  to  the  hill- 
top, and  then  along  it.  The  slopes  at  this  end 
of  the  hill  are  gentle,  and  from  low  down, 
where  our  lines  are,  it  is  a  pleasant  and  grace- 
ful brae,  where  the  larks  never  cease  to  sing 
and  where  you  may  always  put  up  partridges 
and  sometimes  even  a  hare.  It  is  a  deserted 
hill  at  this  time,  but  for  the  wild  things.  The 
No  Man's  Land  is  littered  with  the  relics  of  a 
charge;  for  many  brave  Dorsetshire  and  Wilt- 
shire men  died  in  the  rush  up  that  slope.  On 
the  highest  point  of  the  enemy  parapet,  at  the 
end  of  the  hill,  is  a  lonely  white  cross,  which 
stands  out  like  a  banner  planted  by  a  conquerer. 
It  marks  the  grave  of  an  officer  of  the  Wilts, 
who  was  killed  there,  among  the  ruin,  In  the 
July  attack. 

Below  the  lines,  where  the  ground  droops 
away  toward  the  river,  the  oddly  shaped, 
deeply-vallied  Wood  of  AuthuIUe  begins.     It 


The  Old  Front  Line  65 

makes  a  sort  of  socket  of  woodland  so  curved 
as  to  take  the  end  of  the  spur. 

It  is  a  romantic  and  very  lovely  wood, 
pleasant  with  the  noise  of  water  and  not  badly 
damaged  by  the  fighting.  The  trees  are  alive 
and  leafy,  the  shrubs  are  pushing,  and  the 
spring  flowers,  wood  anemones,  violets,  and  the 
oxlip  (which  in  this  country  takes  the  place  of 
the  primrose  and  the  cowslip)  flower  beauti- 
fully among  the  shell-holes,  rags,  and  old  tins 
of  war.  But  at  the  north-eastern  end  it  runs 
out  in  a  straggling  spinney  along  the  Leipzig's 
east  flank,  and  this  horn  of  wood  is  almost  as 
badly  shattered  as  if  the  shell  fire  upon  it  had 
been  English.  Here  the  enemy,  fearing  for  his 
salient,  kept  up  a  terrible  barrage.  The  trees 
are  burnt,  ragged,  unbarked,  topped,  and  cut 
off  short,  the  trenches  are  blown  in  and  jumbled, 
and  the  ground  blasted  and  gouged. 

Standing  in  the  old  English  front  line  just 
to  the  north  of  Authuille  Wood,  one  sees  the 
usual  slow  gradual  grassy  rise  to  the  dark  enemy 
wire.  Mesnil  stands  out  among  its  trees  to 
the  left;  to  the  right  is  this  shattered  stretch 
of  wood,  with  a  valley  beyond  it,  and  a  rather 
big,  steep,  green  hill  topped  by  a  few  trees 
beyond  the  valley.     The  jut  of  the  Leipzig 


66  The  Old  Front  Line 

shuts  out  the  view  to  the  flanks,  so  that  one 
can  see  little  more  than  this. 

The  Leipzig,  itself,  like  the  Schwaben,  is  a 
hawk's  nest  or  eyrie.  Up  there  one  can  look 
down  by  Authuille  Wood  to  Albert  church  and 
chimneys,  the  uplands  of  the  Somme,  the 
Amiens  road,  down  which  the  enemy  marched  in 
triumph  and  afterwards  retreated  in  a  hurry, 
and  the  fair  fields  that  were  to  have  been  the 
booty  of  this  war.  Away  to  the  left  of  this  is 
the  wooded  clump  of  Becourt,  and,  beyond  it, 
One  Tree  Hill  with  its  forlorn  mound,  like  the 
burial  place  of  a  King.  On  the  right  flank  is 
the  Ancre  Valley,  with  the  English  position 
round  Hamel  like  an  open  book  under  the  eye ; 
on  the  left  flank  is  the  rather  big,  steep,  green 
hill,  topped  by  a  few  trees,  before  mentioned. 
These  trees  grow  in  and  about  what  was  once 
the  village  of  Ovillers-la-Boisselle.  The  hill 
does  not  seem  to  have  a  name;  it  may  be  called 
here  Middle  Finger  Hill  or  Ovillers  Hill. 

Like  the  Schwaben  and  the  Leipzig  Hills  this 
hill  thrusts  out  from  the  knuckle  of  the  big 
chalk  plateau  to  the  north  of  it  like  the  finger 
of  a  hand,  in  this  case  the  middle  finger.  It  is 
longer  and  less  regularly  defined  than  the  Leip- 
zig Hill;  because  instead  of  ending,  it  merges 
into  other  hills  not  quite  so  high.     The  valley 


The  Old  Front  Line  67 

which  parts  it  from  the  Leipzig  is  steeply  sided, 
with  the  banks  of  great  lynchets.  The  lines 
cross  the  valley  obliquely  and  run  north  and 
south  along  the  flank  of  this  hill,  keeping  their 
old  relative  positions,  the  enemy  line  well  above 
our  own,  so  that  the  approach  to  it  is  up  a 
glacis. 

As  one  climbs  up  along  our  old  line  here,  the 
great  flank  of  Ovillers  Hill  Is  before  one  in  a 
noble,  bare  sweep  of  grass,  running  up  to  the 
enemy  line.  Something  in  the  make  of  this  hill, 
in  its  shape,  or  in  the  way  it  catches  the  light, 
gives  it  a  strangeness  which  other  parts  of  the 
battlefield  have  not.  The  rise  between  the 
lines  of  the  trenches  is  fully  two  hundred  yards 
across,  perhaps  more.  Nearly  all  over  it,  in 
no  sort  of  order,  now  singly,  now  in  twos  or 
threes,  just  as  the  men  fell,  are  the  crosses  of 
the  graves  of  the  men  who  were  killed  in  the  at- 
tack there.  Here  and  there  among  the  little 
crosses  Is  one  bigger  than  the  rest,  to  some  man 
specially  loved  or  to  the  men  of  some  battalion. 
It  is  diflUcult  to  stand  in  the  old  English  line 
from  which  those  men  started  without  the  feel- 
ing that  the  crosses  are  the  men  alive,  still  going 
forward,  as  they  went  in  the  July  morning  a 
year  ago. 

Just  within  the  enemy  line,  three-quarters  of 


68  The  Old  Front  Line 

the  way  up  the  hill,  there  is  a  sort  of  small 
flat  field  about  fifty  yards  across  where  the 
enemy  lost  very  heavily.  They  must  have 
gathered  there  for  some  rush  and  then  been 
caught  by  our  guns. 

At  the  top  of  the  hill  the  lines  curve  to  the 
southeast,  drawing  closer  together.  The  crest 
of  the  hill,  such  as  it  is,  was  not  bitterly  disputed 
here,  for  we  could  see  all  that  we  wished  to 
see  of  the  hill  from  the  eastern  flank.  Our 
line  passes  over  the  spur  slightly  below  it,  the 
enemy  line  takes  in  as  much  of  it  as  the  enemy 
needed.  From  it,  he  has  a  fair  view  of  Albert 
town  and  of  the  country  to  the  east  and  west 
of  it,  the  wooded  hill  of  Becourt,  and  the  hill 
above  Fricourt.  From  our  line,  we  see  his  line 
and  a  few  tree-tops.  From  the  eastern  flank 
of  the  hill,  our  line  gives  a  glimpse  of  the  site  of 
the  village  of  Ovillers-la-Boisselle,  once  one  of 
the  strong  places  of  the  enemy,  and  now  a  few 
heaps  of  bricks,  and  one  spike  of  burnt  ruin 
where  the  church  stood. 

Like  most  Picardy  villages,  Ovillers  was 
compactly  built  of  red  brick  along  a  country 
road,  with  trees  and  orchards  surrounding  it. 
It  had  a  lofty  and  pretentious  brick  church  of 
a  modern  type.  Below  and  beyond  it  to  the 
east  is  a  long  and  not  very  broad  valley  which 


The  Old  Front  Line  69 

lies  between  the  eastern  flank  of  Ovillers  Hill 
and  the  next  spur.  It  is  called  Mash  Valley  on 
the  maps.  The  lines  go  down  Ovillers  Hill 
into  this  valley  and  then  across  it. 

Right  at  the  upper  end  of  this  valley,  rather 
more  than  a  mile  away,  yet  plainly  visible  from 
our  lines  near  Ovillers,  at  the  time  of  the 
beginning  of  the  battle,  were  a  few  red-brick 
ruins  in  an  irregular  row  across  the  valley-head. 

A  clump  of  small  fir  and  cypress  trees  stood 
up  dark  on  the  hill  at  the  western  end  of  this 
row,  and  behind  the  trees  was  a  line  of  green 
hill  topped  with  the  ruins  of  a  windmill.  The 
ruins,  now  gone,  were  the  end  of  Pozieres 
village,  the  dark  trees  grew  in  Pozieres 
cemetery,  and  the  mill  was  the  famous  windmill 
of  Pozieres,  which  marked  the  crest  that  was 
one  of  the  prizes  of  the  battle.  All  these  things 
were  then  clearly  to  be  seen,  though  in  the  dis- 
tance. 

The  main  hollow  of  the  valley  is  not  remark- 
able except  that  it  is  crossed  by  enormous 
trenches  and  very  steeply  hedged  by  a  hill  on 
its  eastern  flank.  This  eastern  hill  which  has 
such  a  steep  side  is  a  spur  or  finger  of  chalk 
thrusting  southward  from  Pozieres,  like  the 
ring-finger  of  the  imagined  hand.  Mash 
Valley  curves  round  its  finger-tip,  and  just  at 


yo  The  Old  Front  Line 

the  spring  of  the  curve  the  third  of  the  four 
Albert  roads  crosses  it,  and  goes  up  the  spur 
towards  Pozieres  and  Bapaume.  The  line  of 
the  road,  which  is  rather  banked  up,  so  as  to  be 
a  raised  way,  like  so  many  Roman  roads,  can  be 
plainly  seen,  going  along  the  spur,  almost  to 
Pozieres.  In  many  places,  it  makes  the  eastern 
skyline  to  observers  down  in  the  valley. 

Behind  our  front  line  in  this  Mash  Valley  is 
the  pleasant  green  Usna  Hill,  which  runs  across 
the  hollow  and  shuts  it  in  to  the  south.  From 
this  hill,  seamed  right  across  with  our  reserve 
and  support  trenches,  one  can  look  down  at  the 
enemy  position,  which  crosses  Mash  Valley  in 
six  great  lines  all  very  deep,  strong,  and  dug 
into  for  underground  shelter. 

Standing  in  Mash  Valley,  at  the  foot  of  Ring 
Finger  Spur,  just  where  the  Roman  Road  starts 
its  long  rise  to  Pozieres,  one  sees  a  lesser  road 
forking  off  to  the  right,  towards  a  village  called 
Contalmaison,  a  couple  of  miles  away.  The 
fork  of  the  road  marks  where  our  old  front 
line  ran.  The  trenches  are  filled  in  at  this 
point  now,  so  that  the  roads  may  be  used,  but 
the  place  was  once  an  exceedingly  hot  corner. 
In  the  old  days,  all  the  space  between  the  two 
roads  at  the  fork  was  filled  with  the  village  or 
hamlet  of  La  Boisselle,  which,  though  a  tiny 


The  Old  Front  Line  71 

place,  had  once  a  church  and  perhaps  a  hundred 
inhabitants.  The  enemy  fortified  the  village 
till  it  was  an  exceedingly  strong  place.  We 
held  a  part  of  the  village  cemetery.  Some  of 
the  broken  crosses  of  the  graves  still  show 
among  the  chalk  here. 

To  the  left  of  the  Roman  Road,  only  a 
stone's  throw  from  this  ruined  graveyard,  a 
part  of  our  line  is  built  up  with  now  rotting 
sandbags  full  of  chalk,  so  that  it  looks  like  a 
mound  of  grey  rocks.  Opposite  the  mound, 
perhaps  a  hundred  yards  up  the  hill,  is  another, 
much  bigger,  irregular  mound,  of  chalk  that  has 
become  dirty,  with  some  relics  of  battered  black 
wire  at  its  base.  The  space  between  the  two 
mounds  is  now  green  with  grass,  though  pitted 
with  shell-holes,  and  marked  in  many  places 
with  the  crosses  of  graves.  The  space  is  the 
old  No  Man's  Land,  and  the  graves  are  of  men 
who  started  to  charge  across  that  field  on  the 
1st  of  July.  The  big  grey  mound  is  the  outer 
wall  or  casting  of  a  mine  thirty  yards  deep  in 
the  chalk  and  a  hundred  yards  across,  which 
we  sprang  under  the  enemy  line  there  on  that 
summer  morning,  just  before  our  men  went 
over. 

La  Boisselle,  after  being  battered  by  us  in 
our  attack,  was  destroyed  by  enemy  fire  after 


72  The  Old  Front  Line 

we  had  taken  It,  and  then  cleared  by  our  men 
who  wished  to  use  the  roads.  It  offers  no  sight 
of  any  interest;  but  just  outside  it,  between  the 
old  lines,  there  is  a  stretch  of  spur,  useful  for 
observation,  for  which  both  sides  fought  bit- 
terly. For  about  200  yards,  the  No  Man's 
Land  is  a  succession  of  pits  In  the  chalk  where 
mines  have  been  sprung.  Chalk,  wire,  stakes, 
friends,  and  enemies  seem  here  to  have  been  all 
blown  to  powder. 

The  lines  cross  this  debated  bit,  and  go  across 
a  small,  ill-defined  bulk  of  chalk,  known  as 
Chapes  Spur,  on  the  top  of  which  there  is  a 
vast  heap  of  dazzlingly  white  chalk,  so  bright 
that  it  is  painful  to  look  at.  Beyond  it  is  the 
pit  of  a  mine,  evenly  and  cleanly  blown,  thirty- 
five  yards  deep,  and  more  than  a  hundred  yards 
across,  in  the  pure  chalk  of  the  upland,  as  white 
as  cherry  blossom.  This  is  the  finest,  though 
not  the  biggest,  mine  In  the  battlefield.  It  was 
the  work  of  many  months,  for  the  shafts  by 
which  it  was  approached  began  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  away.  It  was  sprung  on 
the  1st  of  July  as  a  signal  for  the  attack.  Quite 
close  to  it  are  the  graves  of  an  officer  and  a 
sergeant,  both  English,  who  were  killed  in  the 
attack  a  few  minutes  after  that  chasm  in  the 


The  Old  Front  Line  73 

chalk  had  opened.  The  sergeant  was  killed 
while  trying  to  save  his  officer. 

The  lines  bend  down  south-eastward  from 
Chapes  Spur,  and  cross  a  long,  curving,  shallow 
valley,  known  as  Sausage  Valley,  famous,  later 
in  the  battle,  as  an  assembly  place  for  men  go- 
ing up  against  Pozieres.  Here  the  men  in  our 
line  could  see  nothing  but  chalk  slope  to  right, 
left,  or  front,  except  the  last  tree  of  La 
Boisselle,  rising  gaunt  and  black  above  the  line 
of  the  hill.  Just  behind  them,  however,  at  the 
foot  of  the  Sausage  Valley  they  had  a  pleasant 
wooded  hill,  the  hill  of  Becourt,  which  was  for 
nearly  two  years  within  a  mile  of  the  front  line, 
yet  remained  a  green  and  leafy  hill,  covered 
with  living  trees,  among  which  the  chateau  of 
Becourt  remained  a  habitable  house. 

The  lines  slant  in  a  south-easterly  direction 
across  the  Sausage  Valley;  they  mount  the  spur 
to  the  east  of  it,  and  proceed,  in  the  same  direc- 
tion, across  a  bare  field,  like  the  top  of  a  slightly 
tilted  table,  in  the  long  slope  down  to  Fricourt. 
Here,  the  men  In  our  front  lines  could  see  rather 
more  from  their  position.  In  front  of  them 
was  a  smooth  space  of  grass  slightly  rising  to 
the  enemy  lines  two  hundred  yards  away.  Be- 
hind the  enemy  lines  is  a   grassy  space,   and 


74  The  Old  Front  Line 

behind  this,  there  shows  what  seems  to  be  a 
gully  or  ravine,  beyond  which  the  high  ground 
of  another  spur  rises,  much  as  the  citadel  of 
an  old  encampment  rises  out  of  its  walled  ditch. 
This  high  ground  of  this  other  spur  is  not  more 
than  a  few  feet  above  the  ground  near  it,  but  it 
is  higher;  it  commands  it.  All  the  high  ground 
is  wooded.  To  the  southern  or  lower  end  of 
it  the  trees  are  occasional  and  much  broken  by 
fire.  To  the  northern  or  upper  end  they  grow 
In  a  kind  of  wood  though  all  are  much  de- 
stroyed. Right  up  to  the  wood,  all  the  high 
ground  bears  traces  of  building;  there  are  little 
tumbles  of  bricks  and  something  of  the  colour 
of  brick  all  over  the  pilled,  poxed,  and  blasted 
heap  that  is  so  like  an  old  citadel.  The  ravine 
in  front  of  it  Is  the  gully  between  the  two  spurs; 
it  shelters  the  sunken  road  to  Contalmalson; 
the  heap  is  Fricourt  village,  and  the  woodland 
to  the  north  is  Fricourt  Wood.  A  glance  is 
enough  to  show  that  it  is  a  strong  position. 

To  the  left  of  Fricourt,  the  spur  rises  slowly 
into  a  skyline.  To  the  right  the  lines  droop 
down  the  spur  to  a  valley,  across  a  brook  and  a 
road  in  the  valley,  and  up  a  big  bare  humping 
chalk  hill  placed  at  right  angles  to  the  spur  on 
which  Fricourt  stands. 

The  spur  on  which  Fricourt  stands  and  the 


\ 


The  Old  Front  Line  75 

spur  down  which  the  lines  run  both  end  at  the 
valley  in  a  steep  drop.  Just  above  the  steep 
fall  our  men  fought  very  hard  to  push  back  the 
enemy  a  little  towards  Fricourt,  so  that  he 
might  not  see  the  lower  part  of  the  valley,  or 
be  able  to  enfilade  our  lines  on  the  other  side 
of  it.  For  about  three  hundred  yards  here 
the  space  between  the  lines  is  filled  with  the 
craters  of  mines  exploded  under  the  enemy's 
front  line.  In  some  cases,  we  seized  and  held 
the  craters;  in  others  the  craters  were  untenable 
by  either  side.  Under  one  of  those  held  by  us 
it  was  found  that  the  enemy  had  sunk  a  big 
counter-mine,  which  was  excavated  and  ready 
for  charging  at  the  time  of  the  beginning  of 
the  battle,  when  Fricourt  fell.  This  part  of  the 
line  is  more  thickly  coated  with  earth  than  most 
of  the  chalk  hills  of  the  battlefield.  The 
craters  lie  in  a  blown  and  dug  up  wilderness 
of  heaps  of  reddish  earth,  pocked  with  shell- 
holes,  and  tumbled  with  wire.  The  enemy  lines 
are  much  broken  and  ruined,  their  parapets 
thrown  down,  the  mouths  of  their  dugouts 
blown  in,  and  their  pride  abased. 

The  Fricourt  position  was  one  of  the  boasts 
of  the  enemy  on  this  front.  Other  places  on 
the  line,  such  as  the  Leipzig,  the  Schwaben,  and 
the  trenches  near  Hamel,  were  strong,  because 


76  The  Old  Front  Line 

they  could  be  supported  by  works  behind  them 
or  on  their  flanks.  Fricourt  was  strong  in  it- 
self, like  Gommecourt.  It  was  perhaps  the 
only  place  in  the  field  of  which  it  could  be  said 
that  it  was  as  strong  as  Gommecourt.  As  at 
Gommecourt,  it  had  a  good  natural  glacis  up 
to  the  front  line,  which  was  deep,  strong,  and 
well  wired.  Behind  the  front  line  was  a  wired 
second  line,  and  behind  that,  the  rising  spur 
on  which  the  village  stood,  commanding  both 
with  machine-gun  emplacements. 

Fricourt  was  not  captured  by  storm,  but 
swiftly  isolated  and  forced  to  surrender.  It 
held  out  not  quite  two  days.  It  was  the  first 
first-rate  fortress  taken  by  our  men  from  the 
enemy  in  this  engagement.  In  the  ruins,  they 
saw  for  the  first  time  the  work  which  the  enemy 
puts  into  his  main  defences,  and  the  skill  and 
graft  with  which  he  provides  for  his  comfort. 
For  some  weeks,  the  underground  arrange- 
ments of  Fricourt,  the  stairs  with  wired  treads, 
the  bolting  holes,  the  air  and  escape  shafts,  the 
living  rooms  with  electric  light,  the  panelled 
walls,  covered  with  cretonnes  of  the  smartest 
Berlin  patterns,  the  neat  bunks  and  the  signs  of 
female  visitors,  were  written  of  in  the  press,  so 
that  some  may  think  that  Fricourt  was  better 
fitted  than  other  places  on  the  line.     It  is  not  so. 


The  Old  Front  Line  77 

The  work  at  Fricourt  was  well  done,  but  it  was 
no  better  than  that  at  other  places,  where  a 
village  with  cellars  in  it  had  to  be  converted 
into  a  fortress.  Our  men  took  Fricourt  at  the 
beginning  of  the  battle,  in  a  fair  state  of  preser- 
vation. Such  work  was  then  new  to  our  men, 
and  this  good  example  was  made  much  of. 

In  the  valley  below  the  village,  in  great,  deep, 
and  powerfully  revetted  works,  the  enemy  had 
built  himself  gun  emplacements,  so  weighted 
with  timber  balks  that  they  collapsed  soon  after 
his  men  ceased  to  attend  them.  The  line  of 
these  great  works  ran  (as  so  many  of  his 
important  lines  have  run)  at  the  foot  of  a  steep 
bank  or  lynchet,  so  that  at  a  little  distance  the 
parapet  of  the  work  merged  into  the  bank  be- 
hind It  and  was  almost  invisible. 

This  line  of  guns  ran  about  east  and  west 
across  the  neck  of  the  Fricourt  Salient,  which 
thrust  still  further  south,  across  the  little  valley 
and  up  the  hill  on  the  other  side. 

Our  old  line  crosses  the  valley  just  to  the 
east  of  the  Fricourt  Station  on  the  little  railway 
which  once  ran  In  the  valley  past  Fricourt  and 
Mametz  to  Montauban.  It  then  crossed  the 
fourth  of  the  roads  from  Albert,  at  Fricourt 
cemetery,  which  is  a  small,  raised  forlorn 
garden  of  broken  tombs  at  cross-roads,  under 


78  The  Old  Front  Line 

the  hill  facing  Fricourt.  Here  our  line  began 
to  go  diagonally  up  the  lower  slopes  of  the  hill. 
The  enemy  line  climbed  It  further  to  the  east, 
round  the  bulging  snout  of  the  hill,  at  a  steep 
and  difficult  point  above  the  bank  of  a  sunken 
road.  Towards  the  top  of  the  hill  the  lines 
converged. 

All  the  way  of  the  hill,  the  enemy  had  the 
stronger  position.  It  was  above  us  almost  in- 
visible and  unguessable,  except  from  the  air,  at 
the  top  of  a  steep  climb  up  a  clay  bank,  which  in 
wet  weather  makes  bad  going  even  for  the 
Somme;  and  though  the  lie  of  the  ground  made 
it  impossible  for  him  to  see  much  of  our  posi- 
tion, it  was  impossible  for  us  to  see  anything 
or  his  or  to  assault  him.  The  hill  Is  a  big 
steep  chalk  hill,  with  contours  so  laid  upon  it 
that  not  much  of  It  can  be  seen  from  below.  By 
looking  to  the  left  from  our  trenches  on  its 
western  lower  slopes  one  can  see  nothing  of 
Fricourt,  for  the  bulge  of  the  hill's  snout  covers 
it.  One  has  a  fair  view  of  the  old  English 
line  on  the  smoothlsh  big  slope  between  Fri- 
court and  Becourt,  but  nothing  of  the  enemy 
stronghold.  One  might  have  lived  in  those 
trenches  for  nearly  two  years  without  seeing 
any  enemy  except  the  rain  and  mud  and  lice. 

Up  at  the  top  of  the  hill,  there  is  an  immense 


D 
^ 


m 

C 

w 

00 


The  Old  Front  Line  79 

prospect  over  the  eastern  half  of  the  battlefield, 
and  here,  where  the  lines  converge,  it  was  most 
necessary  for  us  to  have  the  crest  and  for  the 
enemy  to  keep  us  off  it.  The  highest  ground 
is  well  forward,  on  the  snout,  and  this  point 
was  the  only  part  of  the  hill  which  the  enemy 
strove  to  keep.  His  line  goes  up  the  hill  to  the 
highest  point,  cuts  off  the  highest  point,  and  at 
once  turns  eastward,  so  that  h's  position  on 
the  hill  is  just  the  northern  slope  and  a  narrow 
line  of  crest.  It  is  as  though  an  army  holding 
Fleet  Street  against  an  army  on  the  Embank- 
ment and  in  Cheapside  should  have  seized  Lud- 
gate  Hill  to  the  top  of  the  steps  of  St.  Paul's  and 
left  the  body  of  the  cathedral  to  its  opponent. 
The  lines  securing  this  important  salient  are  of 
immense  strength  and  intricacy,  with  many 
great  avenues  of  approach.  The  front  line  is 
double  across  the  greater  part  of  the  crest,  and 
behind  it  is  a  very  deep,  strong,  trebly  wired 
support  line  which  is  double  at  important  points. 
Our  old  front  line  runs  almost  straight  across 
the  crest  parallel  with  the  enemy  front  line, 
and  distant  from  it  from  forty  to  one  hundred 
and  fifty  yards.  The  crest  or  highest  ground 
is  on  both  flanks  of  the  hill-top  close  to  the 
enemy  line.  Between  the  lines  at  both  these 
points  are  the  signs  of  a  struggle  which  raged 


8o  The  Old  Front  Line 

for  weeks  and  months  for  the  possession  of 
those  lumps  of  hill,  each,  perhaps,  two  hundred 
yards  long,  by  fifty  broad,  by  five  high.  Those 
fifteen  feet  of  height  were  bartered  for  with 
more  than  their  own  weight  of  sweat  and  blood ; 
the  hill  can  never  lose  the  marks  of  the  struggle. 
In  those  two  patches  of  the  hill  the  space 
between  the  lines  is  a  quarry  of  confluent 
craters,  twenty  or  thirty  yards  deep,  blown  into 
and  under  each  other  till  the  top  of  the  hill  is 
split  apart.  No  man  can  now  tell  which  of 
all  these  mines  were  sunk  by  our  men.  The 
quarry  runs  irregularly  in  heaps  and  hollows  of 
chalk  and  red  earth  mingled  like  flesh  and 
blood.  On  our  side  of  the  pits  the  marks  of 
our  occupation  are  plain.  There  in  several 
places,  as  at  La  Boisselle  and  on  the  Beaucourt 
spur,  our  men  have  built  up  the  parapet  of 
our  old  front  line  by  thousands  of  sandbags 
till  it  is  a  hill-top  or  cairn  from  which  they 
could  see  beyond.  The  sandbags  have  rotted 
and  the  chalk  and  flints  within  have  fallen  partly 
through  the  rags,  and  Nature  has  already  begun 
to  change  those  heaps  to  her  own  colours,  but 
they  will  be  there  for  ever  as  the  mark  of  our 
race.  Such  monuments  must  be  as  lasting  as 
Stonehenge.  Neither  the  mines  nor  the  guns 
of  the  enemy  could  destroy  them.    From  among 


The  Old  Front  Line  8i 

them  our  soldiers  peered  through  the  smoke  of 
burning  and  explosions  at  the  promised  land 
which  the  battle  made  ours. 

From  those  heaps  there  is  a  wide  view  over 
that  part  of  the  field.  To  the  left  one  sees 
Albert,  the  wooded  clump  of  Becourt,  and  a 
high  green  spur  which  hides  the  Sausage  Valley. 
To  the  front  this  green  spur  runs  to  the  higher 
ground  from  which  the  Fricourt  spur  thrusts. 
On  this  higher  ground,  behind  Fricourt  and  its 
wood,  is  a  much  bigger,  thicker,  and  better 
grown  wood,  about  a  mile  and  a  half  away;  this 
is  the  wood  of  Mametz.  Some  short  distance 
to  the  left  of  this  wood,  very  plainly  visible 
on  the  high,  rather  bare  hill,  is  a  clump  of 
pollarded  trees  near  a  few  heaps  of  red  brick. 
The  trees  were  once  the  shade-giving  trees 
about  the  market-place  of  Contalmaison,  a 
hamlet  at  a  cross-roads  at  this  point.  Behind 
these  ruins  the  skyline  is  a  kind  of  ridge  which 
runs  in  a  straight  line,  broken  in  one  place  by 
a  few  shatters  of  trees.  These  trees  are  the 
remains  of  the  wood  which  once  grew  outside 
the  village  of  Pozieres.  The  ridge  Is  the  Al- 
bert-Bapaume  Road,  here  passing  over  the 
highest  ground  on  Its  path. 

Turning  from  these  distant  places  and  look- 
ing to  the  right,  one  sees,  just  below,  twelve 


82  The  Old  Front  Line 

hundred  yards  to  the  east  of  Fricourt,  across 
the  valley  at  the  foot  of  this  hill  of  the  salient, 
the  end  of  an  irregular  spur,  on  which  are  the 
shattered  bricks  of  the  village  of  Mametz  be- 
fore mentioned. 

To  the  north  of  Mametz  the  ground  rises. 
From  the  eyrie  of  the  salient  one  can  look  over 
it  and  away  to  the  north  to  big  rolling  chalk 
land,  most  of  it  wooded.  Mametz  Wood  is  a 
dark  expanse  to  the  front;  to  the  right  of  it 
are  other  woods,  Bazentin  Woods,  Big  and 
Little,  and  beyond  them,  rather  to  the  right  and 
only  just  visible  as  a  few  sticks  upon  the  sky- 
line, are  two  other  woods.  High  Wood,  like  a 
ghost  in  the  distance,  and  the  famous  and  ter- 
rible Wood  of  Delville.  High  Wood  is  nearly 
five  miles  away  and  a  little  out  of  the  picture. 
The  other  wooded  heights  are  about  three  miles 
away.  All  that  line  of  high  ground  marked  by 
woods  was  the  enemy  second  line,  which  with 
a  few^  slight  exceptions  was  our  front  line  be- 
fore the  end  of  the  third  week  of  the  battle. 

From  this  hill-top  of  the  salient  the  lines 
run  down  the  north-eastern  snout  of  the  hill 
and  back  across  the  valley,  so  as  to  shut  in 
Mametz.  Then  they  run  eastward  for  a 
couple  of  miles,  up  to  and  across  a  plateau  in 
front  of  the  hamlet  of  Carnoy,  which  was  just 


The  Old  Front  Line  83 

within  our  line.     From  our  line,  in  this  bare 
and  hideous  field,  little  could  be  seen  but  the 
slope  up   to   the   enemy  line.     At   one   point, 
where  the  road  or  lane  from  Carnoy  to  Mon- 
tauban   crossed  the   enemy  line,    there   was   a 
struggle  for  the  power  to  see,  and  as  a  result 
of  the  struggle  mines  and  counter-mines  were 
sprung  here  till  the  space  between  the  lines  is 
now  a  chaos  of  pits  and  chasms  full  of  water. 
The  country  here  Is  an  expanse  of  smoothish 
tilted    slopes,    big,    empty,    and    lonely,    and 
crossed    (at    about    the    middle    point)    by    a 
strange  narrow  gut  or  gully,  up  which  the  rail- 
way once  ran  to  Montauban.     No  doubt  there 
are  places  in  the  English  chalk  counties  which 
resemble  this  sweep  of  country,  but  I  know  of 
none  so  bare  or  so  featureless.     The  ground  Is 
of  the  reddish   earth  which  makes   such  bad 
mud.     The  slopes  are  big  and  gradual,  either 
up  or  down.     Little  breaks  the  monotony  of 
the  expanse  except  a   few  copses  or  sites  of 
copses;  the  eye  Is  always  turning  to  the  dis- 
tance. 

In  front,  more  than  half  a  mile  away,  the 
ground  reaches  Its  highest  point  In  the  ridge  or 
bank  which  marks  the  road  to  Montauban. 
The  big  gradual  sweep  up  Is  only  broken  by 
lines  of  trenches  and  by  mud  heaped  up  from 


84  The  Old  Front  Line 

the  road.  Some  of  the  trees  which  once  made 
Montauban  pleasant  and  shady  still  stand  over 
the  little  heaps  of  brick  and  solitary  iron  gate 
which  show  where  the  village  used  to  stand. 
Rather  to  the  right  of  this,  and  nearer  to  our 
lines,  are  some  irregular  red  heaps  with  girders 
protuding  from  them.  This  is  the  enemy 
fortress  of  the  brickworks  of  Montauban. 
Beyond  this,  still  further  to  the  right,  behind 
the  old  enemy  line,  the  ground  loses  its 
monotony  and  passes  into  lovely  and  romantic 
sweeping  valleys,  which  our  men  could  not  see 
from  their  lines. 

Well  behind  our  English  lines  in  this  district 
and  above  the  dip  where  Carnoy  stands,  the 
fourth  of  the  four  roads  from  Albert  runs  east- 
ward along  a  ridge-top  between  a  double  row 
of  noble  trees  which  have  not  suffered  very 
severely,  except  at  their  eastern  end.  Just 
north  of  this  road,  and  a  little  below  it  on  the 
slopes  of  the  ridge,  is  the  village  of  Maricourt. 
Our  line  turns  to  the  southeast  opposite 
Montauban,  and  curves  in  towards  the  ridge 
so  as  to  run  just  outside  Maricourt,  along  the 
border  of  a  little  wood  to  the  east  of  the  houses. 
From  all  the  high  ground  to  the  north  of  it, 
from  the  enemy's  second  line  and  beyond,  the 
place  is  useful  to  give  a  traveller  his  bearings. 


The  Old  Front  Line  85 

The  line  of  plane-trees  along  the  road  on  the 
ridge,  and  the  big  clumps  of  trees  round  the 
village,  are  landmarks  which  cannot  be  mis- 
taken from  any  part  of  the  field. 

Little  is  to  be  seen  from  our  line  outside 
Maricourt  Wood,  except  the  enemy  line  a  little 
beyond  it,  and  the  trees  of  other  woods  behind 
it. 

The  line  turns  to  the  south,  parallel  with  the 
wood,  crosses  the  fourth  road  (which  goes  on 
towards  Peronne)  and  goes  down  some  difficult, 
rather  lovely,  steep  chalk  slopes,  wooded  in 
parts,  to  the  ruins  of  Fargny  Mill  on  the 
Somme  River. 

The  Somme  River  is  here  a  very  beautiful  ex- 
panse of  clear  chalk  water  like  a  long  wander- 
ing shallow  lake.  Through  this  shallow  lake 
the  river  runs  In  half  a  dozen  channels,  which 
are  parted  and  thwarted  in  many  places  by 
marsh,  reed-beds,  osier  plots,  and  tracts  of 
swampy  woodland.  There  is  nothing  quite  like 
it  in  England.  The  river-bed  Is  pretty  gen- 
erally between  five  and  six  hundred  yards 
across. 

Nearly  two  miles  above  the  place  where  the 
old  enemy  line  comes  down  to  the  bank,  the 
river  thrusts  suddenly  north-westward.  In  a  very 
noble  great  horse-shoe,  the  bend  of  which  comes 


t^' 


86  The  Old  Front  Line 

at  Fargny  where  our  lines  touched  It.  The 
enemy  line  touched  the  horse-shoe  close  to  our 
own  at  a  curious  wooded  bank  or  slope,  known 
(from  Its  shape  on  the  map,  which  Is  like  a 
cocked  hat)  as  the  Chapeau  de  Gendarme. 
Just  behind  our  lines,  at  the  bend,  the  horse- 
shoe sweeps  round  to  the  south.  The  river-bed 
at  once  broadens  to  about  two-thirds  of  a  mile, 
and  the  river,  in  four  or  five  main  channels, 
passes  under  a  most  beautiful  sweep  of  steep 
chalk  cliff,  not  unlike  some  of  the  chalk  country 
near  Arundel.  These  places  marked  the  end  of 
the  British  sector  at  the  time  of  the  beginning 
of  the  battle.  On  the  south  or  left  bank  of 
the  Somme  River  the  ground  was  held  by  the 
French. 

Such  was  our  old  front  line  at  the  beginning 
of  the  battle,  and  so  the  travellers  of  our  race 
will  strive  to  picture  it  when  they  see  the  ground 
under  the  crops  of  coming  Julys.  It  was  never 
anything  but  a  makeshift,  patched  together, 
and  held,  God  knows  how,  against  greater 
strength.  Our  strongest  places  were  the  half- 
dozen  built-up  observation  posts  at  the  mines 
near  Fricourt,  Serre,  and  La  Boisselle.  For 
the  rest,  our  greatest  strength  was  but  a  couple 
of  sandbags  deep.     There  was  no  concrete  in 


The  Old  Front  Line  87 

any  part  of  the  line,  very  few  iron  girders  and 
not  many  iron  *'  humpies "  or  "  elephant 
backs  "  to  make  the  roofs  of  dugouts.  The 
whole  line  gives  the  traveller  the  impression 
that  it  was  improvised  (as  it  was)  by  amateurs 
with  few  tools,  and  few  resources,  as  best  they 
could,  in  a  time  of  need  and  danger.  Like  the 
old,  hurriedly  built  Long  Walls  at  Athens,  it 
sufficed,  and  like  the  old  camps  of  Caesar  it 
served,  till  our  men  could  take  the  much  finer 
lines  of  the  enemy.  A  few  words  may  be  said 
about  those  enemy  hnes.  They  were  very  dif- 
ferent lines  from  ours. 

The  defences  of  the  enemy  front  line  varied 
a  little  in  degree,  but  hardly  at  all  in  kind, 
throughout  the  battlefield.  The  enemy  wire 
was  always  deep,  thick,  and  securely  staked  with 
iron  supports,  which  were  either  crossed  like  the 
letter  X,  or  upright,  with  loops  to  take  the 
wire  and  shaped  at  one  end  like  corkscrews 
so  as  to  screw  into  the  ground.  The  wire 
stood  on  these  supports  on  a  thick  web,  about 
four  feet  high  and  from  thirty  to  forty  feet 
across.  The  wire  used  was  generally  as  thick 
as  sailor's  marline  stuff,  or  two  twisted  rope- 
yarns.  It  contained,  as  a  rule,  some  sixteen 
barbs  to  the  foot.  The  wire  used  In  front  of 
our  lines   was   generally  galvanized,    and   re- 


88  The  Old  Front  Line 

mained  grey  after  months  of  exposure.  The 
enemy  wire,  not  being  galvanized,  rusted  to  a 
black  colour,  and  shows  up  black  at  a  great 
distance.  In  places  this  web  or  barrier  was 
supplemented  with  trip-wire,  or  wire  placed 
just  above  the  ground,  so  that  the  artillery  ob- 
serving officers  might  not  see  it  and  so  not  cause 
it  to  be  destroyed.  This  trip-wire  was  as  diffi- 
cult to  cross  as  the  wire  of  the  entanglements. 
In  one  place  (near  the  Y  Ravine  at  Beaumont 
Hamel)  this  trip-wire  was  used  with  thin  iron 
spikes  a  yard  long  of  the  kind  known  as  cal- 
throps.  The  spikes  were  so  placed  in  the 
ground  that  about  one  foot  of  spike  projected. 
The  scheme  was  that  our  men  should  catch  their 
feet  in  the  trip-wire,  fall  on  the  spikes,  and  be 
transfixed. 

In  places,  in  front  of  the  front  line  in  the 
midst  of  his  wire,  sometimes  even  in  front  of 
the  wire,  the  enemy  had  carefully  hidden  snipers 
and  machine-gun  posts.  Sometimes  these  out- 
side posts  were  connected  with  his  front-line 
trench  by  tunnels,  sometimes  they  were  simply 
shell-holes,  slightly  altered  with  a  spade  to  take 
the  snipers  and  the  gunners.  These  outside 
snipers  had  some  success  in  the  early  parts  of 
the  battle.  They  caused  losses  among  our  men 
by  firing  in  the  midst  of  them  and  by  shoot- 


73 

3 


3 
O 


13 
C 
3 
O 


CO 


The  Old  Front  Line  89 

ing  them  in  the  backs  after  they  had  passed. 
Usually  the  posts  were  small  oblong  pans  in 
the  mud,  in  which  the  men  lay.  Sometimes 
they  were  deep  narrow  graves  in  which  the 
men  stood  to  fire  through  a  funnel  in  the  earth. 
Here  and  there,  where  the  ground  was  favour- 
able, especially  when  there  was  some  little  knop, 
hillock,  or  bulge  of  ground  just  outside  their 
line,  as  near  Gommecourt  Park  and  close  to 
the  Sunken  Road  at  Beaumont  Hamel,  he 
placed  several  such  posts  together.  Outside 
Gommecourt,  a  slight  lynchet  near  the  enemy 
line  was  prepared  for  at  least  a  dozen  such  posts 
invisible  from  any  part  of  our  line  and  not  easily 
to  be  picked  out  by  photograph,  and  so  placed 
as  to  sweep  at  least  a  mile  of  No  Man's  Land. 
When  these  places  had  been  passed,  and  the 
enemy  wire,  more  or  less  cut  by  our  shrapnel, 
had  been  crossed,  our  men  had  to  attack  the 
enemy  fire  trenches  of  the  first  line.  These, 
like  the  other  defences,  varied  in  degree,  but  not 
in  kind.  They  were,  in  the  main,  deep,  solid 
trenches,  dug  with  short  bays  or  zigzags  in  the 
pattern  of  the  Greek  Key  or  badger's  earth. 
They  were  seldom  less  than  eight  feet  and  some- 
times as  much  as  twelve  feet  deep.  Their  sides 
were  revetted,  or  held  from  collapsing,  by 
strong  wickerwork.     They  had  good,  comfort- 


90  The  Old  Front  Line 

able  standing  slabs  or  banquettes  on  which  the 
men  could  stand  to  fire.  As  a  rule,  the  parapets 
were  not  built  up  with  sandbags  as  ours  were. 

In  some  parts  of  the  line,  the  front  trenches 
were  strengthened  at  intervals  of  about  fifty- 
yards  by  finy  forts  or  fortlets  made  of  concrete 
and  so  built  into  the  parapet  that  they  could 
not  be  seen  from  without,  even  five  yards  away. 
These  fortlets  were  pierced  with  a  foot-long 
slip  for  the  muzzle  of  a  machine  gun,  and  were 
just  big  enough  to  hold  the  gun  and  one  gunner. 

In  the  forward  wall  of  the  trenches  were  the 
openings  of  the  shafts  which  led  to  the  front- 
line dugouts.  The  shafts  are  all  of  the  same 
pattern.  They  have  open  mouths  about  four 
feet  high,  and  slant  down  into  the  earth  for 
about  twenty  feet  at  an  angle  of  forty-five  de- 
grees. At  the  bottom  of  the  stairs  which  led 
down  are  the  living  rooms  and  barracks  which 
communicate  with  each  other  so  that  if  a  shaft 
collapse  the  men  below  may  still  escape  by  an- 
other. The  shafts  and  living  rooms  are 
strongly  propped  and  panelled  with  wood,  and 
this  has  led  to  the  destruction  of  most  of  the 
few  which  survived  our  bombardment.  While 
they  were  needed  as  billets  our  men  lived  in 
them.  Then  the  wood  was  removed,  and  the 
dugout  and  shaft  collapsed. 


The  Old  Front  Line  91 

During  the  bombardment  before  an  attack, 
the  enemy  kept  below  in  his  dugouts.  If  one 
shaft  were  blown  in  by  a  shell,  they  passed  to 
the  next.  When  the  fire  "  lifted  "  to  let  the  at- 
tack begin,  they  raced  up  the  stairs  with  their 
machine  guns  and  had  them  in  action  within  a 
minute.  Sometimes  the  fire  was  too  heavy  for 
this,  for  trench,  parapet,  shafts,  dugouts,  wood, 
and  fortlets,  were  pounded  out  of  existence,  so 
that  no  man  could  say  that  a  line  had  ever  run 
there;  and  in  these  cases  the  garrison  was  de- 
stroyed in  the  shelters.  This  happened  in 
several  places,  though  all  the  enemy  dugouts 
were  kept  equipped  with  pioneer  tools  by  which 
buried  men  could  dig  themselves  out. 

The  direction  of  the  front-line  trenches  was 
so  inclined  with  bends,  juts,  and  angles  as  to 
give  flanking  fire  upon  attackers. 

At  some  little  distance  behind  the  front  line 
(a  hundred  yards  or  so)  was  a  second  fire  line, 
wired  like  the  first,  though  less  elaborate  and 
generally  without  concrete  fortlets.  This 
second  line  was  usually  as  well  sited  for  fire  as 
the  front  line.  There  were  many  communica- 
tion trenches  between  the  two  lines.  Half  a 
mile  behind  the  second  line  was  a  third  support 
line;  and  behind  this,  running  along  the  whole 
front,  a  mile  or  more  away,  was  the  prepared 


92  The  Old  Front  Line 

second  main  position,  which  was  in  every  way 
like  the  front  line,  with  wire,  concrete  fortlets, 
dugouts,  and  a  difficult  glacis  for  the  attacker 
to  climb. 

The  enemy  batteries  were  generally  placed 
behind  banks  or  lynchets  which  gave  good 
natural  cover;  but  In  many  places  he  mounted 
guns  In  strong  permanent  emplacements,  built 
up  of  timber  balks,  within  a  couple  of  miles  (at 
Fricourt  within  a  quarter  of  a  mile)  of  his 
front  line.  In  woods  from  the  high  trees  of 
which  he  could  have  clear  observation,  as  In 
the  Bazentin,  Bernafay,  and  Trones  Woods,  he 
had  several  of  these  emplacements,  and  also 
stout  concrete  fortlets  for  heavy  single  guns. 

All  the  enemy  position  on  the  battlefield  was 
well  gunned  at  the  time  of  the  beginning  of  the 
battle.  In  modern  war,  it  is  not  possible  to 
hide  preparations  for  an  attack  on  a  wide  front. 
Men  have  to  be  brought  up,  trenches  have  to 
be  dug,  the  artillery  has  to  prepare,  and  men, 
guns,  and  trenches  have  to  be  supplied  with 
food,  water,  shells,  sandbags,  props,  and  re- 
vetments. When  the  fire  on  any  sector  in- 
creases tenfold,  while  the  roads  behind  the  lines 
are  thronged  with  five  times  the  normal  traffic 
of  troops  and  lorries,  and  new  trenches,  the 
attack  or  "  jumping-off  "   trenches,   are  being 


The  Old  Front  Line  93 

dug  in  front  of  the  line,  a  commander  cannot 
fail  to  know  that  an  attack  is  preparing. 
These  preparations  must  be  made  and  cannot 
be  concealed  from  observers  in  the  air  or  on  the 
ground.  The  enemy  knew  very  well  that  we 
were  about  to  attack  upon  the  Somme  front, 
but  did  not  know  at  which  point  to  expect  the 
main  thrust.  To  be  ready,  in  any  case,  he 
concentrated  guns  along  the  sector.  It  seems 
likely  that  he  expected  our  attack  to  be  an  at- 
tempt to  turn  Bapaume  by  a  thrust  from  the 
west,  by  Gommecourt,  Puisieux,  Grandcourt. 
In  all  this  difficult  sector  his  observations  and 
arrangements  for  cross-fire  were  excellent.  He 
concentrated  a  great  artillery  here  (it  is  a 
legend  among  our  men  that  he  brought  up  a 
hundred  batteries  to  defend  Gommecourt 
alone).  In  this  sector,  and  in  one  other  place 
a  little  to  the  south  of  it,  his  barrage  upon  our 
trenches,  before  the  battle,  was  very  accurate, 
terrible,  and  deadly. 

Our  attacks  were  met  by  a  profuse  machine- 
gun  fire  from  the  trench  parapets  and  from  the 
hidden  pits  between  and  outside  the  lines. 
There  was  not  very  much  rifle  fire  in  any  part  of 
the  battle,  but  all  the  hotly  fought  for  strong- 
holds were  defended  by  machine  guns  to  the 
last.     It  was  reported  that  the  bodies  of  some 


94  The  Old  Front  Line 

enemy  soldiers  were  found  chained  to  their 
guns,  and  that  on  the  bodies  of  others  were 
intoxicating  pills,  designed  to  madden  and  in- 
furiate the  takers  before  an  attack.  The  fight- 
ing in  the  trenches  was  mainly  done  by  bombing 
with  hand-grenades,  of  which  the  enemy  had 
several  patterns,  all  effective.  His  most  used 
type  was  a  grey  tin  cylinder,  holding  about  a 
pound  of  explosive,  and  screwed  to  a  wooden 
baton  or  handle  about  a  foot  long  for  the 
greater  convenience  of  throwing. 

Early  in  the  spring  of  191 6,  it  was  deter- 
mined that  an  attack  should  be  made  by  our 
armies  upon  these  lines  of  the  enemy,  so  as  to 
bring  about  a  removal  of  the  enemy  guns  and 
men,  then  attacking  the  French  at  Verdun  and 
the  Russians  on  the  eastern  front. 

Preparations  for  this  attack  were  made 
throughout  the  first  half  of  the  year.  New 
roads  were  cut,  old  roads  were  remetalled,  new 
lines  of  railways  were  surveyed  and  laid,  and 
supplies  and  munitions  were  accumulated  not 
far  from  the  front.  Pumping  stations  were 
built  and  wells  were  sunk  for  the  supply  of 
water  to  the  troops  during  the  battle.  Fresh 
divisions  were  brought  up  and  held  ready  be- 
hind the  line.     An  effort  was  made  to  check  the 


o 
03 


ON 


The  Old  Front  Line  95 

enemy's  use  of  aeroplanes.  In  June,  our  Air 
Service  in  the  Somme  sector  made  it  so  difficult 
for  the  enemy  to  take  photographs  over  our 
lines  that  his  knowledge  of  our  doings  along 
the  front  of  the  planned  battle  was  lessened  and 
thwarted.  At  the  same  time,  many  raids  were 
made  by  our  aeroplanes  upon  the  enemy's 
depots  and  magazines  behind  his  front. 
Throughout  June,  our  infantry  raided  the 
enemy  line  in  many  places  to  the  north  of  the 
planned  battle.  It  seems  possible  that  these 
raids  led  him  to  think  that  our  coming  attack 
would  be  made  wholly  to  the  north  of  the 
Ancre  River. 

During  the  latter  half  of  June,  our  armies 
concentrated  a  very  great  number  of  guns  be- 
hind the  front  of  the  battle.  The  guns  were  of 
every  kind,  from  the  field  gun  to  the  heaviest 
howitzer.  Together  they  made  what  was  at 
that  time  by  far  the  most  terrible  concentration 
of  artillery  ever  known  upon  a  battlefield. 
Vast  stores  of  shells  of  every  known  kind  were 
made  ready,  and  hourly  increased. 

As  the  guns  came  into  battery,  they  opened 
intermittent  fire,  so  that,  by  the  20th  of  June, 
the  fire  along  Qur  front  was  heavier  than  it  had 
been  before.  At  the  same  time,  the  fire  of  the 
machine    guns    and    trench    mortars    in    our 


96  The  Old  Front  Line 

trenches  became  hotter  and  more  constant. 
On  the  24th  of  June  this  fire  was  increased,  by 
system,  along  the  front  designed  for  the  bat- 
tle, and  along  the  French  front  to  the  south  of 
the  Somme,  until  it  reached  the  intensity  of  a  fire 
of  preparation.  Knowing,  as  they  did,  that  an 
attack  was  to  come,  the  enemy  made  ready  and 
kept  on  the  alert.  Throughout  the  front,  they 
expected  the  attack  for  the  next  morning. 

The  fire  was  maintained  throughout  the  night, 
but  no  attack  was  made  in  the  morning,  except 
by  aeroplanes.  These  raided  the  enemy  obser- 
vation balloons,  destroyed  nine  of  them,  and 
made  it  impossible  for  the  others  to  keep  in  the 
air.  The  shelling  continued  all  that  day,  search- 
ing the  line  and  particular  spots  with  intense  fire 
and  much  asphyxiating  gas.  Again  the  enemy 
prepared  for  an  attack  in  the  morning,  and 
again  there  was  no  attack,  although  the  fire  of 
preparation  still  went  on.  The  enemy  said, 
*'  To-morrow  will  make  three  whole  days  of 
preparation;  the  English  will  attack  to-mor- 
row." But  when  the  morning  came,  there  was 
no  attack,  only  the  never-ceasing  shelling,  which 
seemed  to  increase  as  time  passed.  It  was  now 
difficult  and  dangerous  to  move  within  the  enemy 
lines.  Relieving  exhausted  soldiers,  carrying 
out  the  wounded,   and  bringing  up   food  and 


The  Old  Front  Line  97 

water  to  the  front,  became  terrible  feats  of  war. 
The  fire  continued  and  increased,  all  that  day 
and  all  the  next  day,  and  the  day  after  that.  It 
darkened  the  days  with  smoke  and  lit  the  nights 
with  flashes.  It  covered  the  summer  landscape 
with  a  kind  of  haze  of  hell,  earth-coloured 
above  fields  and  reddish  above  villages,  from 
the  dust  of  blown  mud  and  brick  flung  up  into 
the  air.  The  tumult  of  these  days  and  nights 
cannot  be  described  nor  imagined.  The  air 
was  without  wind  yet  it  seemed  In  a  hurry  with 
the  passing  of  death.  Men  knew  not  which 
they  heard,  a  roaring  that  was  behind  and  In 
front,  like  a  presence,  or  a  screaming  that  never 
ceased  to  shriek  in  the  air.  No  thunder  was 
ever  so  terrible  as  that  tumult.  It  broke  the 
drums  of  the  ears  when  It  came  singly,  but  when 
it  rose  up  along  the  front  and  gave  tongue  to- 
gether In  full  cry  It  humbled  the  soul.  With 
the  roaring,  crashing,  and  shrieking  came  a 
racket  of  hammers  from  the  machine  guns  till 
men  were  dizzy  and  sick  from  the  noise,  which 
thrust  between  skull  and  brain,  and  beat  out 
thought.  With  the  noise  came  also  a  terror 
and  an  exultation,  that  one  should  hurry,  and 
hurry,  and  hurry,  like  the  shrieking  shells.  Into 
the  pits  of  fire  opening  on  the  hills.  Every 
night  in  all  this  week  the  enemy  said,  "  The 


98  The  Old  Front  Line 

English  will  attack  to-morrow,"  and  in  the  front 
lines  prayed  that  the  attack  might  come,  that  so 
an  end,  any  end,  might  come  to  the  shelling. 

It  was  fine,  cloudless,  summer  weather,  not 
very  clear,  for  there  was  a  good  deal  of  heat 
haze  and  of  mist  in  the  nights  and  early  morn- 
ings. It  was  hot  yet  brisk  during  the  days. 
The  roads  were  thick  in  dust.  Clouds  and 
streamers  of  chalk  dust  floated  and  rolled  over 
all  the  roads  leading  to  the  front,  till  men  and 
beasts  were  grey  with  it. 

At  half-past  six  in  the  morning  of  the  ist  of 
July  all  the  guns  on  our  front  quickened  their 
fire  to  a  pitch  of  intensity  never  before  attained. 
Intermittent  darkness  and  flashing  so  played  on 
the  enemy  line  from  Gommecourt  to  Maricourt 
that  it  looked  like  a  reef  on  a  loppy  day.  For 
one  instant  it  could  be  seen  as  a  white  rim  above 
the  wire,  then  some  comber  of  a  big  shell  struck 
it  fair  and  spouted  it  black  aloft.  Then  an- 
other and  another  fell,  and  others  of  a  new  kind 
came  and  made  a  different  darkness,  through 
which  now  and  then  some  fat  white  wreathing 
devil  of  explosion  came  out  and  danced.  Then 
it  would  show  out,  with  gaps  in  it,  and  with 
some  of  it  level  with  the  field,  till  another 
comber  would  fall  and  go  up  like  a  breaker  and 
smash  it  out  of  sight  again.     Over  all  the  vil- 


The  Old  Front  Line  99 

lages  on  the  field  there  floated  a  kind  of  bloody 
dust  from  the  blasted  bricks. 

In  our  trenches  after  seven  o'clock  on  that 
morning,  our  men  waited  under  a  heavy  fire  for 
the  signal  to  attack.  Just  before  half-past 
seven,  the  mines  at  half  a  dozen  points  went  up 
with  a  roar  that  shook  the  earth  and  brought 
down  the  parapets  in  our  lines.  Before  the 
blackness  of  their  burst  had  thinned  or  fallen 
the  hand  of  Time  rested  on  the  half-hour  mark, 
and  along  all  that  old  front  line  of  the  English 
there  came  a  whistling  and  a  crying.  The  men 
of  the  first  wave  clim^bed  up  the  parapets,  in 
tumult,  darkness,  and  the  presence  of  death, 
and  having  done  with  all  pleasant  things,  ad- 
vanced across  the  No  Man's  Land  to  begin  the 
Battle  of  the  Somme. 


'  Tiiifl  END 


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"Neither  in  the  design  nor  in  the  telling  did  or  could  *  Enoch 
Arden'  come  near  the  artistic  truth  of  *The  Daffodil  Fields.'"  — 
Sir  Quiller-Couchy  Cambridge  University, 

A  Mainsail  Haul 

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As  a  sailor  before  the  mast  Masefield  has  traveled  the  world  over. 
Many  of  the  tales  in  this  volume  are  his  own  experiences  written 
with  the  same  dramatic  fidelity  displayed  in  "  Dauber." 

The  Tragedy  of  Pompey 

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A  play  such  as  only  the  author  of  "Nan"  could  have  written. 
Tense  in  situation  and  impressive  in  its  poetry  it  conveys  Mase- 
field's  genius  in  the  handling  of  the  dramatic  form. 


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Fnl^lishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  Tork 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

Captain  Margaret 


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Captain  Margaret,  owner  of  the  Broken  Heart,  mild  dreamer  and 
hardy  adventurer  in  one,  is  a  type  of  character  one  does  not 
often  meet  in  fiction,  and  his  troubled  pursuit  of  the  vision  he  is 
always  seeing,  in  Mr.  Masefield's  telling,  is  a  story  such  as  we 
seldom  hear.  From  England  to  Virginia  and  the  Spanish  Main 
with  men  at  arms  between  decks  goes  the  Broken  Heart  following 
her  master's  dream,  and  her  thrilling  voyage  with  its  storms  and 
battles  is  strongly  and  stirringly  told.  When  John  Masefield 
writes  of  the  sea,  the  sea  lives. 

"Worthy  to  rank  high  among  books  of  its  class.  The  story 
has  quaHty,  charm,  and  spirited  narrative."  —  Outlook, 


The  Locked  Chest,  and  the 
Sweeps  of  Ninety-Eight 


$^'25 


The  place  of  Mr.  Masefield  as  a  dramatist  has  been  amply 
proved  by  the  plays  which  he  has  published  hitherto — ^"The 
Faithful,"  "  PhiHp  the  King,"  "  The  Tragedy  of  Pompey,"  among 
others.  In  the  realm  of  the  one-act  play  he  is  seen  to  quite  as 
good  effect  as  in  the  longer  work.  This  volume,  the  first  new 
book  from  Masefield  since  his  American  tour,  ranks  with  his  best. 


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BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


Salt  Water  Poems  and  Ballads. 

Twelve  full-page  illustrations  in  color,  and  twenty  in  black  and  white. 
By  Charles  Pears.  Price,  $2.00 

A  book  of  permanent  value  by  the  foremost  living  poet,  illus- 
trated in  colors  by  a  widely  known  artist,  selling  at  a  reasonable 
price. 

"The  salt  of  the  sea  is  in  these  jingles;  not  the  mystic  sea  of  the 
older  poets  who  had  an  art,  but  the  hard  sea  that  men  fight,  even 
in  these  days  of  leviathan  liners,  in  stout-timbered  hulls  with 
blocks  to  rattle  and  hemp  for  the  gale  to  whistle  through  and  give 
the  salt-lipped  chantey  man  his  rugged  meters."  —  New  York  Sun. 

"His  verse  has  the  accent  of  old  chanties,  the  rudeness  and  the 
mysticism,  simple  and  matter-of-fact,  of  the  deep-sea  mariner."  — 
New  York  Times. 

"They  have  the  roar  and  dash  and  swing  of  crashing  breakers, 
the  sharp  tang  of  the  salt  sea  air,  and  at  times  they  creak  and 
strain  like  a  stout  clipper  ship  in  the  roaring  forties."  —  Philadel- 
phia North  American. 

"They  have  the  tang  of  salt  spray,  and  the  blue  light  of  corpse 
candles.  Wassail  and  song  echo  through  the  lines,  and  the  spirit  of 
youth  that  finds  interest  and  excitement  in  bad  and  good  alike. 
Their  lyric  quality  is  true.  Reckless  and  daring  they  are  in  spirit." 
—  Baltimore  Sun. 


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